As the daughter of a diplomat, my life has been characterized by an endless cascade of people, places, opportunities, experiences, and contrasts. The theme of my past two summers has been global health, but my current internship working in monitoring and evaluation at CapacityPlus is almost the antithesis of my volunteer work in a rural eye hospital in India last year.
Two very different summers
Although I shiver in the hyperactively air-conditioned Washington DC office, I enjoy my own cubicle complete with a laptop and phone and big swirling chair, and I appreciate immensely the opportunity to interact with colleagues who’ve led incredible lives. I take lots of notes, work on compiling an indicator compendium to measure the state of human resources for health, and am starting to learn how global health is affected on a policy level. Read more »
Sunita Kumari was struggling to get her message across. Working as an auxiliary nurse midwife in Gumla District, Jharkhand, 
On my trip to India last month, I didn’t plan to focus on maternal health care, but walking through the maternity ward in Bihar, I couldn’t help but worry about the long lines and hours that keep a woman waiting to see a doctor. The health officials I met with are incredibly committed to serving their communities. In one case, I actually had to walk through the maternity ward to reach my meeting with members of the chief surgeon’s office and the head of district medicine. I realized these men and women walk by the patients every day—women like the proud new mother who urged me to come over and take a photograph of her new daughter. Although the hospital I was in is among the nicest in the state, it lacks many of the essential information systems that can make a health system run efficiently and effectively. In practical terms, this might mean the women I walked by would not have to spend so long waiting to be seen. 
