Tag: HopeF- International Development

After a busy eight days, our time at FHI 360 has come to a close. Our last day, was, as usual, full of meetings planned for us. In the morning, we got to sit on the CTID team’s monthly update meeting, and then after a brief break, we presented one of the projects we had been working on for the past 2 weeks – an app based on the challenge presented to a hackathon a month ago in San Fransisco. The original challenge given to us was to improve the data collection process about teen contraceptive preferences, but in the meetings we’d attended we’d heard a lot about user-centric and woman-centric design, so we modified the challenge a bit. Our final product not only collected data through a would-you-rather format, it also ~matched~ women with their perfect contraceptive method based on the data – it was user-centric and researcher-centric. I thought our project would just be something for us to do in the short span of 2 weeks, but the CTID team liked the idea so much they are pitching it to the winner of the hackathon and seeing if they can get funding to combine our ideas into one app/program that could actually be used – we are so excited!

After two weeks at FHI 360, I not only know more about contraceptive methods than I ever thought I would, but I found a work environment I really loved.  It was really empowering for me to work with this group of women, many with PhDs and MDs, who are so passionate about their work and mission, and who de-stigmatized contraception + women’s health for me and have really inspired me to think about my future career path. To all the members of the CTID team, thank you for an amazing experience.

Our second to last day at FHI 360 ended up being one of our busiest – we had four different meetings/speeches with just an hour or so off in the morning, but I found it was one of the most engaging + fun days we’ve had during our entire time with the CTID team. My favorite meeting of the day was one we weren’t even originally planning on attending: FHI 360 has this really cool program of brown bag lunches – they bring in speakers who are experts on their topics, whether from inside or outside the company. The brown bag we attended today was given by a rising college freshman who had taken a gap year in Senegal through the Global Citizen Year program. He’d spent around a year living with a host family in a village outside of Dakar, doing service projects and becoming immersed in Senegalese culture. I thought the program itself sounded amazing, as I’d really loved connecting with my host family in Austria, but it also made the work FHI 360 does seem even more accessible possible in the near future for teens like Chloe, Caroline, Maddie, and I.

Another meeting that was really cool today was the one on the use of drones for public health. We met with Marga Eichleay, who is in charge of the drone program at FHI 360, to talk about new innovations. She showed us videos of swarms, where dozens drones are programmed to interact with their surroundings and each other and fly in formations, and she talked about the possible ethical problems with privacy and other countries’ policies on drones. The coolest things we talked about were the current medical uses – in cities, drones are used to deliver AEDs to people having heart attacks to avoid traffic, and a startup in Rwanda is using drones to send blood and treatments out to isolated clinics that need the supplies but may not have refrigeration to store them. And also, the French Air Force has trained golden eagles (eagles!!) to attack dangerous drones and bring them to the ground.

– Hope

Today was a full day of meetings for the four of us – when we weren’t working on our video, we had four different meetings with CTI and FHI 360 staff. All of the people we talked with focused on their career paths, and how their routes to FHI 360 were circuitous and unexpected. I thought it was cool that two of the people we talked to, Greg Kopf and Laneta Dorflinger, both talked about how a professor in college or grad school left such a lasting impact on them that they ended up in a field of study entirely different from what they were expecting, all because that professor was able to help them realize their passions. Even Hannah, an intern from UNC who started a few days ago, told us how she’d started out at Johns Hopkins studying chemistry, but after taking classes in UNC’s Public Health program with a really great professor she realized she wanted to study that instead and completely changed her future career plans. Their stories made me more optimistic about my future, because I don’t have any idea what I want to major in right now – but that’s okay, because I have yet to meet the professor or experience the life-altering event that inspires me.

– Hope

IMG_3078-1ic82rl – a short part of our video project

“I have a masters in Geography, but now I work in a condom lab” – our tour guide and experienced PQC Lab Technician

Our last day of the first week consisted of a field trip first thing in the morning, which had been shrouded in mystery by the CTI staff. All we’d been told was that it was the PQC, or product quality and compliance lab, but after today, I know more about condoms than I ever thought I’d know – how they’re made, what they can withstand, and how long they last, among many other things. First thing Friday morning, Caroline and I rode with the UNC fellow, Lauren, and arrived at the nondescript office building that houses the PQC lab.

The lab provides quality assurance for many types of  contraception and anti-malarial medicine, and is USAID’s (US Agency for International Development) quality provider for all condoms worldwide. They take a few dozen condoms from a batch of a few thousand and test them for various defects – dimensions, holes, elasticity, etc. – and if even a couple of the test group fail any test, the entire batch must be destroyed. Since the facility started in the 90s, it has tested over a billion condoms – and we got to see demonstrations of the tests.

Condoms – and other contraceptive devices – are left in sealed chamber for months at a time, and then technicians conduct tests and smell them To test for holes, the lab technicians filled them with 330 ccs (about a third of a liter of water) and then used the “squeeze and roll” method to see if any water could leak out. To test the packaging, the condoms are submerged in a sealed water chamber and the technicians watch for streams of bubbles. Speaking of sealed packaging, I was somewhat horrified to learn today that condoms aren’t required to be sterile, and our tour guide informed us he has found dirt, hair, and even insects in the condoms.The most interesting part of our tour was the airburst test. We got to watch as male and female condoms were inflated in a closed chamber until they exploded, as to pass quality standards the condoms must withstand a certain amount of pressure. It was fascinating to see just how much condoms can withstand, and we certainly had an interesting day at FHI 360.

– Hope

VID-1u3q4sm – video of the airburst test

After a few days, I’ve finally settled into a sort of schedule at FHI 360, one that is full of project work and meetings with new staff. My favorite meeting today was with Irina Yacobson, a Technical Advisor who trains healthcare providers around the world on how to safely administer contraceptives. As she is Russian, Yacobson was initially hired to work with women in the more remote regions of the former Soviet Union, where the problems with contraception were almost the opposite of those of more conservative or developing countries. Though women did have access to contraception, abortion was used as a method of family planning, and some women had large numbers of abortions rather than taking contraceptives to prevent pregnancy in the first place. FHI 360 worked to both prevent those possibly damaging practices, and I found it interesting to see that the non-profit’s scope was not limited to just preventing pregnancy and STDs in developing countries, but addresses all aspects of women’s health worldwide.

Irina Yacobson also told us about how important experiential teaching is  –  many organizations dump large quantities of contraception, like IUDs or injections, onto developing countries. But the organizations don’t train the healthcare providers in the countries how to use them: in Eastern Europe, depo-provera, an injectable, was being injected twice a day like an antibiotic instead of once every three months like it was supposed to be, all because there were no instructions accompanying the delivered drugs. That middle step of training between creating the contraceptives and putting them to use is so crucial, but one I’d never thought about before. Lastly, Yacobson showed us her demonstration on how to insert an IUD that she gives to health care providers, with a plastic uterus model and all – it made the whole process a bit less mystical to me. After a couple days with the CTI team, I’ve realized that my sexual education had been lacking in contraceptives beyond just condoms, and other methods as well as female sexual activity and reproduction are still pretty stigmatized, even in the US. That’s why I’ve really appreciated the work the CTI team does – they are working make female reproductive health safer and less stigmatizednot just for teens like us, but for women all around the world.

– Hope

 

As I arrived at FHI 360 for our second day of work, I was considerably more tired than I had been Tuesday morning – but as we had the chance to delve into our projects, I quickly found myself engaged and awake during another exciting day.

After our morning meeting, and during some of our free time, the four of us worked on our first project. Our goal was this: how can surveys on contraception be both accessible and fun for a younger generation? We were encouraged to implement social media platforms into our pitch, and we came up with a “Tinder-style” survey on contraceptives that matches the user with their best fit, but also collects data for the CTI researchers. A decision-tree format that allows the user to rank how they feel about certain side effects and tailor their contraception to them, and it can also provide information to the CTI team about which side effects and contraceptive methods are most important to women worldwide. I think we’ve made a great start on our pitch, and it was very cool to work on a very unique project that I hadn’t been expecting at a nonprofit like FHI 360.

Before lunch, Maddie and I met with Stevie Daniels to look at their photo database for the upcoming CTI social media exchange. Because of a very minimal budget for photography, all photos used by FHI 360 are either taken from creative-commons databases like Flickr, pulled from specialized photo libraries that only allow one-time use, or are taken by FHI 360 employees at their sites. It was cool to see all the beautiful photos taken by staff around the world, but the process of collecting those photos into one location and getting permission to use some was quite complicated.

The four of us went to lunch on the American Tobacco campus today as well. The FHI 360 offices are in a very convenient location: not only is it a 2 minute walk from cafes and Durham restaurants, it also overlooks the Durham Bulls Athletic Park. In the afternoon, we spent more time in meetings talking over new projects we will work on this week. One requires us to go through a few very long spreadsheets of contacts and categorize them based on their professional fields – we’ll be doing quite a bit of professional stalking through linkedin and their company websites. Our last big project will be a video that summarizes the work CTI has done.

Today was a great day at FHI 360, and I’m excited for tomorrow!

-Hope

My first day at FHI 360 was kind of exhausting, but fascinating, engaging, and above all, inspiring. The first thing I learned about the nonprofit – FHI 360 – is that the work they do involves an enormous number of acronyms that the company uses in their work. FHI 360, though now a large, global nonprofit with many focuses, was initially focused on family planning, and for the duration of our internships, we are lucky to be working with the CTI program, or contraceptive technology innovation. We spent our first day learning about the work that different members of the CTI have done, and what their career paths have been.

Jill Sergison, an associate scientist and midwife, talked to us about her non-traditional career path and experiences at FHI 360. Although she didn’t take the traditional route in the non-profit world of spending time in the Peace Corps before receiving her PhD, she still ended up at FHI 360 doing work that fascinated her. She also encouraged us to check our white American privilege when looking at project work – the differences of  our lives in comparison to the women we are helping are substantial, and when designing projects we should consider those differences before making decisions.

Lucy Wilson, a technical advisor, talked about the possible struggles with funding the company faces. She works with various donors to secure funding for CTI projects, and as the Trump administration has released the new proposed budget, she has had to look into other sources of funding for FHI 360, as 65% of the non-profits funds come from US governmental agencies like the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

Lastly, Aubrey Weber, a technical officer, talked with us about her work on social media campaigns for Linkages (improving treatment for HIV  and AIDs) + Passages (improving family planning and sexual norms in Africa), and an upcoming campaign for CTI. She discussed some of her day-to-day activities, like drafting blogposts and tweets, and how the tense political climate and possible budget cuts for nonprofits conducting medical research have complicated what she can and can’t post on the company accounts.

In addition to talking with us, they also came up with some really cool projects for us to work on while we are at FHI 360. They would like us to come up with ways to use social media to make data collection about contraception more fun for teens, work on a video, modernize powerpoints, help develop a photo database, and do research on private philanthropists who may be interested in funding CTI.

I am so excited to continue working at FHI 360!

Hi everyone!! So excited to be working at FHI 360 with Maddie, Caroline, and Chloe! Check back next Tuesday for more info about our first day!

– Hope