A typical day for me involves me waking up at 7 am, getting ready and eating some oatmeal before walking over to the office. Fortunately, I live about a 15 minute walk from my accommodation to my department office. I usually try getting to the office by 9:30, and when I arrive, I speak with my advisor on my goals for the day/week and how I should navigate some next steps for my work. There’s usually always a meeting taking place, and thanks to my advisor being in several office groups, I get to join and learn about cool projects and programs taking place. One project that was especially fascinating to me was reducing reports of violence for both nurses and patients within the South African Hospital System. Alongside group meetings, there are often lectures, so the department will either hear from one of the PhD students’ thesis projects or global health professionals and the work they do. One of my favorites was getting to hear about the state of global health and the role of technology within it from a professor from Yale!
The Health systems department has introduced me to the concepts of health data and bioethics. My work centers around health system resilience and creating guides for decision makers, community leaders and citizens about regulations that enforce data privacy and protect them from firms profiting off of their information. Due to this being the focus of my work, I have learned about what health data is, and the ethics behind data sharing and selling. Another very interesting conversation that keeps reoccurring is the idea that colonial systems of resource extraction and production are being reinforced through data. Data from developing countries have become very profitable, so many academics and community health workers are wary of the way data from hospitals (and the lack of surveillance of said data) is being used and given to firms or the reasons that firms have hospital data (for example the United Kingdom’s collaboration with Palantir). Also, given the restructuring of foreign relations and aid, data from the global south may be the only resource/leverage they can currently use to afford resources from the global north.