Personal Journey: From Rural Nigeria to Public Health

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Personal Career Statement I developed a love for public health very early in my career, after a brief life changing experience in rural Nigeria. My medical school had closed for six months in my fifth year, because of a strike. I decided to go back to my village in rural eastern Nigeria, to stay with my elderly grandmother. She had diabetes and was showing signs of Alzheimer’s disease. I loved her dearly and wanted to help with her care. My village had no electricity and no health care facility. The nearest hospital was 20 miles away. I learned so much in that six months. I found out that the nearest thing to a health care provider in my village was a man who knew next to nothing about health care. Kids and pregnant women were dying in numbers. …show more content…

For example, my knowledge of epidemiology, biostatistics, and data management is still limited to the basic. Other areas I need to work on include delegation of duties. I tend to be sensitive with regards to the outcome of projects that I work on. I easily get disappointed when team mates fail to deliver on their responsibilities. Hence, I tend to have issues with delegating. I also need to work on my coaching/teaching skills and public presentations. To critically evaluate my leadership abilities, I decided to use the ‘Leadership Assessment Tools Inventory - Gaining Power and Influence Section’ of Kellogg at Northwest University. The assessment result showed that I fell into the third quartile. This is no surprise given that I still have so much to learn in the field of public health. The breakdown of the assessment revealed some interesting details. It showed that I lagged in areas of ‘position characteristics’ this includes: visibility, flexibility criticality and centrality of the positions I have occupied so far. I did a lot better in areas of ‘Personal Characteristics’ (expertise, personal attraction, effort, and

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