A perspective piece by Undergraduate Student Cassi Niedziela
Pictured: Health workers at a community health screening at a school in Accra, Ghana
In January 2019, I stepped off a plane that had just landed in Accra, Ghana. I was nervous to be spending a whole semester in a new country, but I was also excited for the adventures that I knew would lie ahead. I am currently a third-year undergraduate student studying Global Public Health and Sociology, and I chose to study at NYU Accra because I wanted to get hands-on public health experience and learn more about the health concerns and politics of sub-Saharan Africa. While in Ghana, I was able to immerse myself in West African culture and broaden my perspective of the world, and I also discovered a newfound love for fried sweet plantains!
In addition to my courses at NYU Accra, I completed an internship to satisfy the Experiential Learning requirement for my Global Public Health major. My internship was at the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health (GCNH), which is the umbrella body for over 400 health NGOs in Ghana.
My main tasks at this internship included assisting with the development of project proposals focused on sexual and reproductive health rights for women, youth, and vulnerable communities in Ghana, and designing, editing, and creating content for the GCNH quarterly newsletter. I also researched and compiled information for health projects about sexual and reproductive health in hard to reach communities in Ghana, and I analyzed and formatted data from annual health reports on nation-wide immunization rates. One of my favorite experiences at this internship was when I attended a community health screening for students at a local school in Accra. This screening was sponsored by the Patients Friend Foundation.
Pictured: Logo for the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health
I also conducted independent research with a colleague for my final research paper for the Experiential Learning seminar. My colleague and I studied the Community-Based Health Planning and Services Initiative (CHPS) in Ghana and its relation to healthcare delivery and child immunization rates throughout the country. We chose this as our topic because we had analyzed country-level data on immunization rates in the first half of our internship, and we wanted to see how a health system already in place in Ghana addressed disparities in immunization rates.
Through interviews with health professionals in Ghana, we found that disparities in immunization rates are characterized by an urban/rural divide, but there is also a class divide that leads to a lack of coverage in urban slums. Our interview respondents all spoke highly of CHPS because the program has increased antenatal and postnatal care in rural communities and created social accountability in communities for health service delivery. One respondent even said that “all this points to one thing - CHPS is the solution to healthcare access and tackling some of the pertinent social determinants of health.”
Despite the great strides made by the CHPS program, we recommended that more medical resources be allocated and more skilled health professionals be sent to hard-to-reach communities in both rural and urban areas. We also recommended that there should be more information campaigns about the importance of vaccination, especially for children under the age of five years old. Another component that could help with increasing child vaccination coverage would be vaccination drives on weekday evenings and on the weekends to help caregivers with little time during the working day.
Interning at GCNH allowed me to understand more about the international workplace and the health sector in Ghana. I am thankful for the opportunity to have interned here, and I’m sure that the lessons I have learned will be applicable to my future jobs. I really enjoyed the opportunity to conduct my own research on a topic of my choosing, and I was also able to network and meet some incredible people working in the health sector in Ghana. I hope that one day I can return to Ghana to see the progress that has been made in terms of expanding access to health services, and of course, to eat some more delicious plantains!
Pictured: Collage of photos from my time in Accra, Ghana, including a view of the GCNH office space and traditional Ghanaian food