Stacey McKeeverWorking On A Global Solution To Pediatric Aids
A multi-national team of doctors and administrators work across the globe to provide access and care for HIV positive children. A virtual team working in New York City, Asia and Africa, leverages the web to create strategies to solve challenges around providing care for HIV positive children.
I’ve been working at the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI) on the Global Pediatrics Team this summer. It’s been pretty exciting! I’m on a very small global team – four people – which supports a much larger team of in-country pediatrics managers working in 33 countries in Africa and Asia to provide access to care and treatment for HIV positive children.
So far I’ve been working on a number of interesting projects. I’ve been helping set up a wiki website for the pediatrics managers to use to share best practices and help each other strategize the challenges their country programs face. I’ve been coordinating production of new Dosing Wheels which help doctors correctly dose children with anti-retroviral medicines based on their age and weight. We’re all working on designing a retention workshop to help country teams figure out how to keep HIV positive children attending their doctor appointments and taking their medications. Then I’m also working on a million other projects, both small and large, as they come up!
For the past few weeks my three team members have been working in Africa so I’ve been working from home. We’re a virtual team I guess since even when we’re all in New York we tend to meet at coffee shops downtown or chat on Skype as often as we meet at the office on 125th Street. It’s been great to try to find my way on a young team at an entrepreneurial organization spread far across the globe. I can’t wait for more.
Journal 2
Well the summer is over and I’m back at school, slightly dazed at all we managed to do (and not do) on our tiny little team at the Clinton Foundation. It was an amazing learning experience as well as a great networking opportunity and I feel it set me up quite well for my job search for post graduate work.
I completed lots of projects this summer. Others we never managed to get to because of all the big and little emergencies that came up over the course of the summer. It was like being a regular old member of the team because I got involved in all of those things. I wasn’t just sitting at my desk somewhere working on my own designated projects all by myself. That was great! It also gave me the opportunity to take a real look at the challenges of how an organization like the Clinton Foundation functions in the global health and development sector. I found it especially interesting to see how an organization of business consultants and public health professionals spread out across the globe managed to leverage not only technology but also every single dollar to improve the health and well being of communities.
I feel incredibly grateful to have a bit of both business and public health skills in my tool belt and to be able to face a problem, a colleague, a funder or a client with a diversity of understandings. Thanks to the SEP for allowing me to get another set of experiences to add to my arsenal!
