Not too long ago, Dr. Orin Levine published an article in the Huffington Post entitled, “Uncommon Rewards.” The article was inspired by a comment that Dr. Levine received from a flight attendant: “Global health? You must find your work so rewarding!”
Although I don’t have as many years of experience and I’m not even remotely close to the title Executive Director (of the International Vaccine Access Center, nonetheless) like Dr. Levine, I do seem to get this similar reaction from people when I share what I do with them. And although I can’t give you first-hand insight on things like the debut of pneumonia vaccines, Advance Market Commitments, or the GAVI Alliance (not just yet in this stage of my career, at least), I can give you first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be a peon (let’s be real here) trying to make these sorts of things happen where they’re needed the most. Sure it's rewarding and exciting. But it’s also challenging, fun, emotional, taxing, fulfilling, hopeless and hopeful all at the same time.
“Travel for work? That’s really interesting.” Even though I’m just at the beginning of my career, I’ve found that other people see global health and development with swimming goggles on – it’s strangely intriguing. I’m not sure if this is the product of globalization or just massive unrest with employment, or unemployment, but I get a lot of these follow-up questions: “How do you live in third world countries?,” “what exactly do you do there?,” “what do you generally eat then (especially when you’re in Africa)?,” and, “how do you maintain a social/personal life?”
The simple answer is: you make it work.
The complicated answer is: stay tuned to see how…(because sometimes it does work, and sometimes it just doesn’t).
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