Top image: Dancing as part of Nritya Kala Kendra's performance on YouTube
Capacity building in public health
I am committed to capacity building in the field of public health, and engage with academic institutions and non-profits to do so. I have also participated in disaster relief, e.g. after COVID-19 in New York, and after an earthquake in Ahmedabad.
A few examples of such engagements are below. Additional engagements for capacity building in public health where I have taken up a leadership role are here.
A few examples of such engagements are below. Additional engagements for capacity building in public health where I have taken up a leadership role are here.
Core Member: Women in Global Health (WGH) New York Chapter
- As a core member, I am working with other women leaders to set up a governance structure, develop a membership expansion and engagement strategy, refine goals and objectives for a year, develop an advisory committee, stakeholder mapping, etc. A few missions of WGH are:
- "Gender equal leadership in global health and going beyond gender parity to Gender Transformative Leadership."
- Gender equity in the health and care workforce: including equal representation of women in leadership and decision-making; fair pay and an end to unpaid work in health systems; protection of women health workers from sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment; and protection from harm via effective PPE (personal protective equipment), vaccines and mental health support."
Pre-Publication Support Service (PREPSS)
- Reviewer for Pre-Publication Support Service (PREPSS); an entity that provides manuscript development and writing support to health researchers from around the globe to address authorship disparities. The list of reviewers can be found here.
- The paper "Implementation of Logistics Management Information System and the Availability of Tracer Drugs at Health Posts in Rural Ethiopia: A Mixed-Method Study" (ID#22-002), has been published in the Ethiopian Journal of Health Sciences. Here is the link to the published paper.
Public Health Literacy
- Named as Honorary Director and future leader of public health by Public Health Literacy.
The World Health Organization (WHO); Working for Health
- Consultant and contributor for "Working for Health Five-year action plan for health employment and inclusive economic growth". The plan can be found here, and a PDF version is below.
| Working for Health 2022-2030 Action Plan |
Member of the following working groups:
- Financing mental health: to help accelerate political and financial support for mental health around the world.
- Mental health as part of Universal Healthcare: With the sentiment that every person has the right to the highest attainable level of mental health and the right to make their own decisions, I am helping put together a policy paper that talks about mental health as a human rights issue and make a case for it being included in universal healthcare plans.
Global Health Mentorship
I have been chosen as a mentee for the 2021-22 mentoring program Women Mentoring Women Campaign as a professional with the potential to be a future global health leader.
08/2021 to present: Member, Gender Equity Hub under the WHO Global Health Workforce Network
The purpose of the Hub is to accelerate large-scale gender-transformative progress to address gender inequities and biases in the health and social workforce for the sustainable development goals (SDGs). As part of this work:
The purpose of the Hub is to accelerate large-scale gender-transformative progress to address gender inequities and biases in the health and social workforce for the sustainable development goals (SDGs). As part of this work:
- I contributed to a policy action paper on gender equity and occupational segregation in the global health and care workforce. More details on this to come soon!
- Helped scope a WHO policy bank on gender-transformative policies in the health and care workforce.
- Consulted WHO on its goal of Working for Health is to utilize, build, and maximize the impact of the health and care workforce to accelerate progress towards the SDGs and expand access to UHC by 2030.
06/2021 to present: Core member, Women's Global Leadership working groups at the Center for Global Health (CUGH) at the Johns Hopkins University
With a team of writers and researchers, I am developing several publications around networking and leadership for emerging women leaders in public health. I was featured in the Women in Global Health Slack update in September 2021. The papers we are developing are based on qualitative and quantitative analyses for the networking events that were organized by CUGH, a case study paper on the Slack channel used, and a descriptive paper on enabling environments and essentail skills that women leaders in global health feel are necessary for a successful and fulfilling career.
With a team of writers and researchers, I am developing several publications around networking and leadership for emerging women leaders in public health. I was featured in the Women in Global Health Slack update in September 2021. The papers we are developing are based on qualitative and quantitative analyses for the networking events that were organized by CUGH, a case study paper on the Slack channel used, and a descriptive paper on enabling environments and essentail skills that women leaders in global health feel are necessary for a successful and fulfilling career.
| CUGH Women in Global Health Slack update_Sloka feature |
As part of this group, these publications have been published as part of Strengthening Women’s Leadership in Global Health Special Collection in the Annals of Global Health:
- Meagan Harrison, Dan N. Tran, Andressa Pena, Sloka Iyengar, Aisha Ahmed Abubakar, Katarina Hoernke, Yetunde O. John-Akinola, Sandra Kiplagat, Agustina M. Marconi, Tanaz M. Vaghaiwalla, Anna Kalbarczyk, Jennifer L. Weinberg. Strategies to improve women's leadership preparation for early-career global health professionals: suggestions from two working groups. Published in Annals of Global Health. This paper can be found here.
- Sloka Iyengar, Joanna Ehrlich, Eumihn Chung, Agustina M. Marconi, Aliza R. Karpes Matusevich, Aisha Ahmed Abubakar, Nukhba Zia, Anna Kalbarczyk. Evaluation of a virtual networking event for emerging women leaders in global health. Published in Annals of Global Health. This paper can be found here.
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08/2020 to present: US Representative, Center for Health and Development (CHD) India
05/2021: Represented CHD India to UN ECOSOC to request a Special Consultative Status for the organization. The UN webcast is here (I go at 2.19 hours) and a shorter version developed by CHD group can be found here. This work around achieving the special consultative status was also covered in this newspaper article. |
06/2020 to present: Member, Global health working group, Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (WCAPS)
The aim of the WCAPS Global Health Working Group is to support the global health security agenda consortium, the global health security next generation network, and the alliance for health security cooperation. I am leading the Mental Health sub-WG of this broad group.
The aim of the WCAPS Global Health Working Group is to support the global health security agenda consortium, the global health security next generation network, and the alliance for health security cooperation. I am leading the Mental Health sub-WG of this broad group.
12/2020 to 2/2021: Visiting faculty, Dr. Vishwanath Karad MIT World Peace University
- I developed and taught a course on "Health Policymaking in Developing Countries" for Maters in Public Health (MPH) students.
- The course included content on the following topics based on Strategizing National Health in the 21st Century: a handbook by the World Health Foundation:
- Introduction to health policymaking.
- Population consultation on needs and expectations.
- Situation analysis of the health sector.
- Priority-setting for national health policies, strategies and plans.
- Strategic planning: transforming priorities into plans.
- Operational planning: transforming plans into action.
- Estimating cost implications of a national health policy, strategy or plan.
- Monitoring, evaluation and review of national health policies, strategies and plans.
- Inter-sectoral planning for health and health equity.
- Strategizing in distressed health contexts.
- In addition, students developed presentations on various aspects related to COVID-19 vaccine distribution in India. Some of the topics were:
- Storage of vaccine, maintenance of cold chain.
- Vaccine distribution to refugees and asylum seekers.
- Logistics of COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
- Distribution centers for the vaccine.
- Communication strategy in India around vaccine distribution and its efficacy.
- Sero-surveillance and herd immunity.
- Prioritization of vaccine distribution.