About Me

Some children always have an answer ready when asked what they want to be when they grow up. In a classroom, a few will proclaim that they want to be teachers, some firefighters or policemen, several artists and authors, and plenty plan to become professional athletes. I was never one of those kids. With the exception of a few months where I was convinced that I wanted to work for NASA, I made up answers to the career question until “I don’t know yet” became an acceptable response. My indecision was not just limited to planning my future; I was painfully slow in deciding what to wear, what to eat, what to buy, or which book to choose from a bookshelf. My efficiency-driven father intoned, “There are big decisions and little decisions,” and since most of the decisions were little ones he hoped an understanding of their triviality would help me weigh my options/desires less. Usually my indecision stemmed from seeing every situation–no matter how trivial–from multiple angles, seeing the benefits and disadvantages of all the options, and only then determining whether one option was better than another.

In middle school I joined Model U.N., through which I learned about issues facing the world, from conflict in Kashmir and West Bank to deforestation and illiteracy. The ability to look at a situation from another’s point of view served me well. I participated in Model U.N. through high school, but became increasingly uncomfortable with the competitive nature of the club and the hierarchy of committees; issues like education, health and the environment are discussed by larger bodies, while military situations are addressed by a small group of powerful delegates. Naturally, experienced students fill the more desirable, small committees, while the “soft” topics are seen as training grounds for underclassmen.

I found more respect for these issues at community organizations, where I spent many Saturdays volunteering. As a member and then club leader of Building with Books (now buildOn), I was exposed to issues like illiteracy, HIV/AIDS, extreme poverty, farmer suicides, and female genital cutting. We also learned about issues in New York—homelessness, hunger, reproductive rights—and helped out with related programs and projects. It was through service that I was able to channel my empathy into something meaningful, and I relished the “warm-fuzzy feeling” that accompanies making a positive difference in the world, however small it may be. I was inspired by individuals who saw a need in their community and stepped up to address it. I wanted to do the same, but couldn’t pick one issue to spend my life championing.

When I entered college, I thought I had finally figured out what I wanted to study and dedicate my life to: global health. I was on the fence about what professional path I would follow to get there, but felt that I had found my calling. I wanted to make a big difference for a lot of people, I was in love with Doctors without Borders, and I was interested in both policy and program work. I designed an interdisciplinary major with coursework in anthropology, sociology, international studies and public health, followed the pre-med track, and tried to decide whether I wanted to go to medical school. In the meantime, I became involved in the food justice movement—starting an organic community garden in Hamilton Heights, coordinating CUNY FoodFEST, and explaining my vegetarianism as part of a larger system, rather than because I’ve never wanted to eat flesh. Like many others, food justice is compelling for me because of the ways it affects every aspect of life and society, from labor rights and immigration to the environment and individual/public/global health.

In January of 2011, I had the privilege of studying at the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) compound in Jamkhed, India. Though I did not know it upon registering, the Jamkhed model of comprehensive community-based primary health care was widely used as a template for primary health care (PHC) in other resource-poor rural areas, especially through the use of community health workers. While at the CRHP, my classmates and I lived at the health compound, learned from its founder, Dr. Raj Arole, and his daughter, Dr. Shobha Arole, as well as many of the village health workers, and visited some of the villages involved in the project. As I learned about the history of the project and how it is still functional forty years after its founding, I developed a deep-rooted appreciation for the view of health as something intricately tied to social and environmental conditions. Though I have studied the theory of the social foundations of disease in my coursework, it was my trip to Jamkhed—-where social inequality had been codified by caste and gender roles—-that clarified the close relationship between these conditions and health. My commitment to public health has always been rooted in a desire for equity, so addressing the distal causes of illness as part of “health care” is a matter that I feel strongly about.

For my senior honors thesis, I researched a topic in global health that is closely connected to food justice, which I have been involved with throughout college. In reflecting on my time at Jamkhed, I found an excellent example of the related natures of global health and food justice. This link seemed to be a manifestation of the principles of primary health care, and I wondered how other implementations of rural primary health care addressed this connection. In the course of my research, I discovered that of the many tenets of primary health care, “intersectoral collaboration”—with the understanding that health is affected by many aspects of one’s life and community—is among the least addressed. While primary health care has been widely implemented through community health worker systems, many based on the Jamkhed model, the connection between agriculture and health is rarely applied to the design of these programs or the discussion of the scope of primary health care.