v-INSPIRE Intern, FHTS
My name is Leenus Tafline A E. I am from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. I attended The Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University and completed BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) in the year 2019. I did Post Graduate Diploma in Clinical Research and Pharmacovigilance (PGDCR&PV) in 2019-20 from Frmetro India. Currently, I am pursuing a Master of Public Health at Manipal Academy of Higher Education.
Highest Education: BDS - The Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University
Date of Joining: February 4, 2021
I had just stepped into my second semester of MPH at MAHE in Feb 2021, moving on with new modules and picking up a specialization as Health Policy when I had made the choice to enter FHTS believing the exposure and experience that it could provide. I always had my ears open to experts’ valuable perspectives and I like hearing perspectives irrespective of their educational and employment status as I believe everybody has an interesting take on whatever life throws at them, including public health issues. A week after I stepped in, I got to discuss with Dr Ashish Joshi an assignment on unusual complications of COVID-19. It was a priority issue during that time and was interesting to hear perspectives too. After the introductory assignments, this was the first event which boosted and assured me of the expectations I had.
Moreover, working on a 3 months assignment on a Public Health Informatics project, mapping digital health policies or frameworks of all countries around the world, as a team of 4, communicating, working, and sorting data, was a rewarding experience, especially because of the challenges such as picking credible information (variable extraction) out of secondary databases.
Additionally, the discussion board contributions, again aligned with my interest in hearing different perspectives, I enjoyed reading overall as I didn’t contribute to it as much as I should have. However, I have contributed to the board thrice on topics like innovations in the time of COVID-19, the kind of DSS we would like to make for nutrition and the importance of value proposition design in the implementation of digital health tools and service design innovations (in Health Technology Forum). Furthermore, I got an opportunity to be a teaching assistant for a month where I got to prepare syllabi and modules for a public health database course.
Overall, I would say it was a wonderful experience and thought-provoking 11 months of internship with FHTS. I would highly recommend FHTS to anybody who is keen on public health and advanced technologies and informatics.