“Nothing About Us Without Us”: Involving Peers in Research—An Interview With a Peer Researcher at the AMPATH Rafiki Clinic

Updated on Aug 15, 2023 | AIGH

Peer navigators play an integral role in connecting adolescents with clinical care at the AMPATH Rafiki clinic, but what happens to peers as they transition from adolescence to young adulthood and beyond?

The peer navigator program has immense benefits; it provides many young people with a first job that is fulfilling and rewarding, with opportunities for skills building and learning, as well as career exploration. However, peer navigators eventually age out of the program, as it is only for so long that they are of a similar age as the adolescents they are supporting. These peer navigators are trained and perfectly poised to continue their important work at AMPATH in another capacity.

To maintain involvement in AMPATH and transfer and grow skills, some former peer mentors/navigators turn to getting involved in health and HIV-related research at AMPATH as peer researchers or as part of the Adolescent and Youth Research Advisory Board (AYRAB).

Some peer mentors aspire to become investigators who may lead their own research portfolio. On this path, some peer mentors have transitioned to the role of peer researcher to gain experience and build new skills that will support their career development.

Several of the peer navigators at the AMPATH Rafiki clinic have contributed to research being conducted, and have co-authored several papers with Mount Sinai researchers on topics such as sources of perceived stigma, the impact of multimedia teacher trainings on HIV related stigma, and the prevalence of COVID-19 infection among HIV-infected youth during the pandemic.

Dennis is a peer navigator turned peer research assistant whose first contact with AMPATH was as a patient. He became a peer navigator in 2016, and in 2021 transitioned to being a peer researcher after he aged out of the program.

Dennis has very strong relationships in the community, making him excellent at youth recruitment for studies. He has a pulse on the activities at the Rafiki Centre, as well as in the broader Eldoret community, which also helps to inform our study ideas and procedures. As a peer research assistant, Dennis is also very helpful in picking up on the needs of our participants, and the best ways to engage them. His research focuses on engaging children and adolescents living with HIV, and he has co-authored publications concerning adolescent stigma and ethics.

He sat down with Lonnie Embleton PhD, MPH, an Adolescent Health Advisor at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Health Systems Design, to discuss peer mentors and peer researchers at the Rafiki clinic.

Tell me about what a peer mentor does and your role at Rafiki and AMPATH as a young person?

My role as a peer mentor is linking adolescents to clinicians, especially finding out the things that are hard for the adolescent to tell people, like in school and to other adults. These are topics like stigma in schools, relationships, positive health, dignity, prevention, and how to adhere to medication. The role of a peer mentor is to help them tackle challenges to adherence. Because I’ve walked through the same journey, I have tricks up my sleeves about how to survive and can share those. At the AMPATH facility, we can talk about advocacy, an adolescent’s personal role in their care, and resource mobilization.

So now you’ve transitioned from being a peer mentor to researcher?

Yes. As a peer researcher, I am engaged in recruiting participants, consenting/assenting, and evaluating. In this specific study, we are evaluating and doing interviews with adolescents, and scheduling them for research visits. I also do some data entry, storage, and visualization, mostly within the sphere of research.

What does it mean to be an adolescent/youth peer mentor in Kenya?

During [a community level stigma reduction study study], we trained teachers on how to impact stigma reduction in schools, and created training modules with school teachers. We taught them how, if they find an adolescent living with HIV in the school, they can create a safe environment in the classroom where students feel free to talk about the challenges they face, their relationships, and even feel comfortable enough to disclose their status.

It means a lot that the peer mentors are a part of the research process. Involvement of young people in medical research, such as the introduction of injectable drugs for HIV, often doesn’t happen. Having a peer navigator involved in research allows for that perspective to be present in the development process.

[Another study] looked at some of the challenges that adolescents are facing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As a peer researcher, adolescents feel free talking to me; during the pandemic adolescents would open up to me about lacking food or transport and couldn’t travel [to clinic], etc. So being a peer researcher, I understand the challenges that adolescents face easier than a clinician who is checking their viral loads, for example. I bring friendliness to the adolescent, and they are more honest with me with their thoughts than with the others.

What does the day in the life of a peer mentor or researcher working with adolescents living with HIV look like?

We get to impact a person’s HIV care at the clinic, affecting their treatment adherence and their status from not being virally suppressed to being suppressed. It’s satisfying for a young person to go through that journey with the adolescents and find solutions. Just assisting with an adolescent through the journey, helping an adolescent stay negative, who is already infected, is enjoyable.

Nothing about us without us. Working at Rafiki, I get to understand the needs of the adolescents and channel those concerns forward. Whenever the researchers are making policies or programs, they can see what the adolescents need. With this knowledge, we can create adolescent services to fill their unique needs. So, that is most enjoyable. There is also an advocacy aspect—I get to interact with the outside population and understand and correct myths and misconceptions [about HIV].

How has being a peer mentor and researcher changed your life?

I got to learn a lot about how research is done and some of the priorities I need to make for my own future career. I was mentored on how to write an abstract and manuscript, and I got to travel to the 2019 International Conference of AIDS and STIs in Africa to discuss my work and learn from others. It is interesting and empowering to sit down with policymakers at a summit and tell people what would work, and what would not, and what should be prioritized, based on my experience and knowledge. The journey is great, and is helping me figure out which line of medical research I want to work with. I am currently interested in mental health.

What do you envision in your future career?

I am interested in research and, as a peer in research, I want to answer some of the questions and knowledge gaps I see. I think research will empower me to answer questions I have myself. Research tells us why and how we can improve. I am early in my education, and much more interested in those young people, who have not yet graduated with degrees, and how they can implement innovative ideas they have.

What is one thing that you wish people knew about the role of youth peer mentors?

That it’s hard. It is not as simple as it seems to be a peer mentor. You have to understand mental health, medications, BMI and nutrition; you are partly a social worker for adolescents one-on-one to understand what is going on at home. You are a mini-bit of every role in the facility.

People think peer mentorship is simply a young person talking to another young person. But you have a role in everything. With viral load, for example, you know the person’s value and we have to understand what this means; how this pattern reflects the client’s health. Because we do, we can figure out if they need to see a clinician, nutritionist, or a social worker. So, you need to understand all of the aspects of care for a young person to know how to support them and help link them to the care they need when they confide in you.

What are some of the challenges of being a peer mentor?

The challenges are lack of training. In the world of HIV, information is constantly changing. We get stuck with the old recommendations and need updated information. Young people have to look for the information themselves. We need a structured way to get the most up-to-date information as quickly as possible, and a structured way of training. If you are not constantly looking for updates, you will get stuck with the old information because there is no standardized reporting tool. For example, nevirapine [a medication to treat HIV] is still there, but in the process of being phased out.

What motivates you as a peer mentor?

Getting to walk on the journey with young people, because I’ve been there myself. Getting to assist a young person, it feels good to have impacted someone’s life for the better. Now I have networks, and networking with other people gives me insight into what is currently going on, and what I can do in the facility to get on that level and help. Most of the peer mentors are in the community, but we are in the facility, so we are limited in engaging with what other organizations are doing. I’m also motivated by the linkages to attend conferences and HIV workshops–funded by AMPATH.

 Outside of being a peer mentor/researcher, what do you like to do?

I play chess, I play football, I like going on trips, taking walks, and long road trips. I enjoy engaging with community-based organizations and other organizations to see what is being initiated and what can I do to facilitate programs that will work in our facility. Some examples include safe spaces, mental health spaces, safe environments for young people, new [treatment] drugs being rolled out, etc. I am also passionate about using digital platforms to empower young people to advocate for healthy behaviors.

A lot of my interests circulate around health. I am also passionate about creating an adolescent camp. It would be interesting; a peer mentor adolescent camp/club, where we could engage for a week or four days outside of the clinic and talk about their challenges. It would be great to have the chance to debrief among peer mentors—we hear and see a lot, but who sees us?

What are three words that best describe you? 

Enthusiastic. Self-driven. Creative!

What do you want the world to know about young people and young people in Kenya?

They have the push and the drive to find solutions for themselves. Kenya is a competitive country, every young person has something unique about them. They have grit. Young people are mostly self-driven, with an explosion of ideas to implement. Getting the ability to implement them is a challenge, figuring out how to take their ideas to fruition, so they can make a difference in the community.

Lonnie Embleton, PhD, MPH, is an Adolescent Health Advisor and Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Health System Design.

Ava Boal is an Associate Researcher, Arnhold institute for Global Health and Department of Global Health and Health System Design.

New Horizons in Ghana: From Research Collaboration to Bilateral Partnership

Jul 28, 2023 | AIGH

Attending the conference at Mount Sinai are, from left: Raymond Aborigo, PhD, Helen McGuire, MHSc, David Heller, MD, MPH, and Engelbert Nonterah, MD, PhD.

Since 2017, I’ve been privileged to collaborate with Ghana’s Navrongo Health Research Centre (NHRC) to explore and develop new care models to treat chronic diseases like high blood pressure and depression.

We work in rural communities where there is often no doctor. Our hope is to create and refine programs that improve primary care access worldwide, including in the rural United States, by training nurses and health workers to diagnose and manage these conditions through door-to-door home visits.

I’ve benefited enormously from the research expertise of my colleagues at NHRC, who for more than 30 years have worked tirelessly on countless such studies to close the health gap between urban and rural Ghana—on subjects ranging from malaria to safe childbirth to COVID-19.

Rachel Vreeman, MD, MS, addressing the conference.

Recently, our Mount Sinai partnership in Ghana underwent a major change. With support from the Arnhold Institute for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, my partnership co-director Raymond Aborigo, PhD, a senior social scientist at NHRC, and I convened a week-long conference at Mount Sinai. This conference was aimed at expanding this collaboration from a discrete research project centered on our own adult chronic disease efforts to a bilateral institutional partnership welcoming all the best research minds at Mount Sinai to collaborate with NHRC across all aspects of rural primary care. And since both Mount Sinai and NHRC see research as but one of the three core aims of health leadership, we also mapped out avenues for collaborations for the other two: teaching the next generation of health providers and scholars, and directly providing health care itself informed by novel research and rendered by excellent trainees.

From June 5 through June 9, the Arnhold Institute hosted not only Dr. Aborigo but also Engelbert Nonterah, MD, PhD, a physician and heart disease researcher, and NHRC’s institutional director, Patrick Ansah, MS, MPH. Through meetings with department heads and deans for fields ranging from obstetrics to environmental health to medical education, we mapped out more opportunities to expand the Ghana partnership than we could have imagined—for the benefit of Mount Sinai as much as NHRC. We’re now discussing strategies to send young Mount Sinai scholars to Navrongo, Ghana, to study the impact of pollution on cardiovascular health, researching the genetic causes of heart disease and expanding access to obstetric care.

NHRC offers unique resources and opportunities. NHRC is the premier research agency of the government of Ghana, and when its programs succeed they can be implemented as national health policy. Their research in the 1990s on sending nurses and health volunteers to remote regions to provide door-to-door care cut deaths in half in children under five, and this “Navrongo Experiment” subsequently became the standard of care across Ghana. Further, NHRC completes a census at least twice a year of more than 150,000 people in the local community, allowing precise, up-to-date health data to both guide and measure health interventions by tracking the burden of disease.

But perhaps most importantly, NHRC is universally respected by their community for engaging in ethical, compassionate health research targeted directly at areas of greatest local need. For this reason, Dr. Ansah told us, not only does NHRC rarely struggle to recruit participants for new vaccine trials or other studies, but persons deemed ineligible for these programs sometimes appeal to the Centre to let them into the study anyway.

NHRC also shares Mount Sinai’s core values and that of the Arnhold Institute: conducting cutting-edge research to close health disparities and protect the vulnerable, and ensuring that this work leads to, and learns from, excellence in medical teaching and improving patient care. Moreover, a new university, the C. K. Tedam University of Technology and Applied Sciences, founded in 2020 a mile from NHRC, already boasts a public health school, with a medical school to follow in a few years.

Mount Sinai’s partnership in Ghana has never been stronger, and the possibilities revealed to Dr. Aborigo and me this past month alone have exceeded the greatest expectations we had. With the research and teaching talent of Mount Sinai and NHRC—coupled with our complementary resources and shared values—we have the capacity to build together an alliance to change how primary care is delivered in Ghana and beyond.

David Heller, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and the Department for Global Health and Health System Design and co-director of the Arnhold Institute’s global partnership in Ghana.

Employee Spotlight: Madeleine Ballard, PhD

Updated on Jul 7, 2023 | AIGH

Madeleine Ballard, PhD

Madeleine Ballard, PhD, Assistant Professor at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and the Department of Global Health and Health System Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, designs and studies interventions to improve the performance of community health workers (CHWs) in low- and middle-income countries.

Dr. Ballard is also lead author of the World Health Organization/UNICEF implementation support guide on CHWs and COVID-19 vaccination and co-author of the UNICEF/Global Fund implementation support guide on national georeferenced CHW master lists. She served on the guideline review committee for the first World Health Organization guideline on community health worker programs.

Dr. Ballard serves as Executive Director of Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC),  a network of CHWs and aligned health organizations in 40+ countries making professional community health workers the norm worldwide by changing guidelines and funding.

In this Q&A, Dr. Ballard discusses the inspiration behind the founding of the CHIC and her work at the Institute.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

I live in London, and I’m originally from Montreal. I’ve moved to countries five times in between. I’m fired up about health care for all—particularly the role of technically right and morally sound collaborations to get us there. I dig exercise but have an addiction to bubble tea. I am fascinated by the challenges of post-religious cultural contexts.

What was the inspiration behind the founding of Community Health Impact Coalition?

Community Health Impact Coalition is making professional community health workers (proCHWs) the norm worldwide. We research to equip international norm setters with evidence to create proCHW guidelines. We advocate to influence global financing institutions to increase proCHW funding. We activate in-country networks to win national proCHW policy.

The inspiration for CHIC came from the recognition that large-scale national community health worker (CHW) programs were struggling to replicate the success of smaller, targeted interventions. We saw the immense potential of CHWs in improving population health, but there was a need for a collaborative effort to address the challenges of delivering effective community health programs at scale. CHIC was founded on the principle of collective action and radical collaboration, bringing together CHWs and aligned health organizations with extensive experience in providing high-quality care.

How has working at the Institute influenced your work, and what do you like about working for the Institute?

Working at the Institute has had a profound impact on my work. I appreciate the Institute’s emphasis on integrating evidence-based practice and health equity into long-term partnerships of solidarity. The opportunity to collaborate with and learn from experts from diverse backgrounds has enriched the shared work of the Coalition and influenced my approach to leadership.

How does your work differ from other academic professionals?

What sets my work apart from other academic professionals is my focus on bridging the gap between academia and practice. While academic research is vital, it is equally important to translate research findings into policies that shape the lives of communities every day. I strive to bring together the best of both worlds by leveraging evidence-based practices and collaborating closely with practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders to shorten the evidence to action pipeline.

Can you describe the work you did in Liberia and how that impacted your work?

As the founding Program Manager for Last Mile Health, I worked with community health workers to achieve universal access to health care in some of the most remote parts of the Liberian rainforest—where it took up to 14 hours to reach the nearest clinic and the average age of death was younger than the med students we teach. This experience reinforced my belief in the importance of investing in community health delivery and the role of CHWs as key agents of change. Regions like the ones we lived in were plagued not only by lack of services, but also by the assumption that the people living there are too inaccessible, too difficult, and too expensive to treat. My entire career is devoted to busting these types of “immodest claims of causality.”

Do you have any advice you would like to offer anyone who is thinking of going into the global health field?

Take the time to figure out what you believe is important and have courage to live your values. There are a lot of pre-fabricated notions about how we should approach problems or what constitutes “success”; it’s worth reflecting deeply on whether they reflect your own instincts about what’s meaningful.

Arnhold Institute for Global Health Announces Support for Four Nepal Pilot Projects

Updated on Jun 5, 2023 | AIGH

Still No Health Without Mental Health

Updated on May 31, 2023 | AIGH

Raymond Aborigo, PhD, right, briefs one of our community health nurses on our mental health/high blood pressure care plan.

Every May, as we recognize Mental Health Awareness month, the global implications of ignoring mental well-being continue to grow.  As early as 1953, the head of the World Health Organization declared that “without mental health there can be no physical health.” Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist who transformed global mental health by demonstrating that even lay people can provide effective therapy for depression and anxiety, said the same 15 years ago.

In the intervening decades, we have learned ever more about how depression and isolation make cardiovascular and other chronic disease worse—and, conversely, how those chronic illnesses can worsen mental health. The United States Surgeon General, for example, has declared that loneliness is therefore now a public health crisis.

But worldwide, due to a shortage of health workers, funding, and political will, we remain far from interrupting this vicious cycle.

Globally, depression is the leading cause of disability, whereas cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death—so the two go hand in hand. Some four to six percent of the world lives with depression, and as many as 30 percent of adults live with high blood pressure and other heart diseases.

There is some good news, however: We know that simple behavior counseling can treat both diseases and others—not just one at a time, but together. For example, behavioral activation therapy for depression, pioneered by Dr. Patel and others, can also treat tobacco, alcohol, and other substance misuse—a major risk factor for heart and lung disease, cancer, and countless other chronic diseases. Conversely, motivational interviewing, another simple peer-counseling technique, can help those with chronic illness to stick to their medications, and enhance the impact of behavioral activation on depression.

In partnership with our colleagues at the Navrongo Health Research Centre in Ghana, we therefore developed and piloted a program—called COMBINE—in which community volunteers provide a single counseling intervention to persons living with depression or high blood pressure.

Combining behavioral activation and motivational interviewing, this home visit initiative offers strategies for improving mood, embracing healthy activities, and taking medication daily. Nurses and physician assistants support participants by providing primary care at clinics within walking distance. After 90 days, 93 percent of participants remained in the program, and 97 percent of them achieved control of their condition. In time, we aim to expand this program to include persons with other chronic conditions, like diabetes or asthma.

We hope to ensure that all persons with chronic disease have access to mental health counseling, regardless of depression or other mental health diagnosis—and that those living with mental illness can learn how physical exercise and other healthy actions can help improve mental health.

Despite the practical benefits of integrating mental health into chronic disease care, these care models remain underfunded and underused. Yet as more research shows how and why such programs work, we now have a playbook for how to change that. The road map includes using evidence-based treatments; reducing mental health stigma through community outreach; creating effective but simple measures to track patient progress; and recruiting respected community members to deliver care. Implementing these seemingly simple components requires ongoing efforts from national policymakers and local leaders.

The details will differ across communities, but the strategy grows clearer yearly even as the need for action expands in tandem. Mental health care is an ever-bigger part of health than we realized—but with timely action rooted in health research, that means it can also be a central tool in achieving primary care for all.

Evan Alvarez, MA, MS, is a Program Coordinator with the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and the Department for Global Health and Health System Design at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

 

 

 

David Heller, MD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor at the Arnhold Institute for Global Health and the Department for Global Health and Health System Design and co-director of the Arnhold Institute’s global partnership in Ghana.

 

 

Read more stories about the Arnhold Institute for Global Health

Peer Spotlight Series: Peers as Advocates for Marginalized Adolescents in Kenya

May 5, 2023 | AIGH

Imagine you’re a young person who left or was forced out of your family home due to factors such as abject poverty, violence and abuse, or family conflict. With limited education, a lack of an extended family to turn to, and minimal resources, you find yourself turning to the streets for survival.

This is often the case of young people who find themselves in street situations in Kenya. Once on the streets, young people’s vulnerability to acquiring HIV is elevated due to a lack of safe and adequate housing, violence, and limited opportunities for employment and income generation resulting in many young people, particularly adolescent girls and young women, relying on selling or exchanging sex for money, food, shelter, or other material resources. At the same time, street-connected young people’s ability to access and use health services is extremely restricted owing to their stigmatized identity, lack of health insurance, and other barriers to accessing care.

Evidence demonstrates that the burden of HIV among street-connected young people in Kenya is high. At the same time, these young people face several hurdles to accessing HIV testing and knowing their HIV status and being connected to and remaining engaged in HIV care.

Peer navigators are young people with lived experience on the streets, who are well known by the street community. Peer navigators, as the name suggests, help young people in street situations navigate and gain entry to the health system, by removing many of the barriers that prevent this stigmatized group from accessing care. The peer navigators work to engage street-connected young people in HIV testing and counseling, while providing HIV prevention information and other HIV-related support.

Evans is one of the founders of the adolescent peer mentor program at the MTRH-Rafiki Centre for Excellence in Adolescent Health at AMPATH.

Evans, a young man with experience living and working on the streets, is one of the founders of the adolescent peer mentor program at the MTRH-Rafiki Centre for Excellence in Adolescent Health at AMPATH. He did a three-year term as one of the first peer mentors (peer mentors are based at the clinic versus peer navigators who tend to work out in the community).

Now he is a staunch advocate for children, youth, and families in street situations in Eldoret. He is also an aspiring politician and a volunteer program manager at Inuka Pamoja, which is a community-based organization that provides financial and other support to children and adolescents to help them remain in school.  He sat down with Lonnie Embleton PhD, MPH, an Adolescent Health Advisor and Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Health Systems Design, to discuss his passion for getting street-connected young people into care, the psychological hardship and support needed for peers who deal with difficult circumstances, and his hopes for adolescents and young people in Kenya.

 What does the day in the life of a peer mentor or navigator look like?

Peer mentors act as a bridge between the clients who are coming to MTRH or AMPATH and their clinicians, and give them a voice; they act as a support system for young people with whom they have shared experiences.

There was once a young man who had a problem with taking medication; this had created viral resistance and he was on third-line antiretroviral therapy. He was chased away by family due to stigma, so I came in to help. I discussed his situation with stakeholders, a counseling team, and went to visit the home. The family members didn’t want to be with him, but the boy is now healthy, well, and in school. As a peer mentor, I was able to help link him to the right people; because I had a good rapport with him, I was able to create a trusted environment, and link him to the best professionals who can help him.

How has being a peer mentor changed your life?

Being a peer mentor impacted my life in a very big way. It was my first job, and with the salary I was given I could pay my bills. I gained a lot of experience in how to handle youth and received AMPATH training. The peer mentorship program helped me a lot, and I’m still using the lessons I learned now in life.

Can you tell us more about what you do now?

Currently, I am a volunteer program manager at Inuka Pamoja, and an active aspiring politician. I’m trying to get a breakthrough in life. I joined politics because for people to listen to you in Kenya, you have to be in politics. Then, you meet a lot of people who are connected, and have a bigger voice on how better to help young people in street situations. I wanted to introduce a bill to parliament to help children and youth in the slums and on the streets in Eldoret. I ask myself, how can we help the less fortunate people in the community?  Most are coming from Eldoret informal settlements—Langas, Kamukunji, Mali Nne, and Huruma.

What is one thing that you wish people knew about the role of youth peer mentors?

I really need people to understand that peer mentors are doing very tough work, and people should know that they go through psychological problems, dealing with clients with serious issues. They need and must be offered psychological support. Dealing with street children every day, I don’t go home okay. It can drain you—peer mentors need support and care to deal with what they see. Peer mentors are not paid enough, and are doing very important work.

What are some of the challenges young people face you work with?

Children, youth, and street families need care. For example, the two peer navigators that work at the Rafiki clinic and in the community hold medications for adolescents that live on the street to come and take every day. But often adolescents do not want to be seen at the Rafiki clinic because of stigma, so they do not take their meds. Many of the children and youth in street situations who are on medications have changed their drug regimen, often because of poor adherence and viral resistance. This is a huge issue in these communities. The location they go to take their HIV medicine is an issue because of stigma, and most of the street-connected young people on medication lack access to basic needs, which affects treatment adherence as well. For me, I didn’t take my drugs because I didn’t have food or somewhere to stay when I lived on the street. Then, the drugs interfered with my body. Something that is really important is mass testing in the streets–many people are still infecting others because they don’t know their status.

What motivated you as a peer mentor? What was your favorite thing about working as a peer mentor?

My initial motivation was poverty. I went to the Rafiki clinic to look for a job and earn a living. Looking back to the life I had when I was taking medication and living on the street, I had a very hard time with it. I got a lot of support, and I wanted to pass that support onto someone else. People with HIV can live when they take their medications. My life and experiences encouraged me and inspired me. My favorite part about working as a peer mentor was that I could learn something new every day! I was always learning new things, I got to interact with so many different people.

How would you describe yourself?

I’m a go-getter, and I love pushing things to move. I’m an honest and straightforward guy, and sometimes I get angry when things are not right.

What do you want the world to know about young people and young people in Kenya?

I want the world to know that adolescents are a part of the population that people forget about, a lot. Something more needs to be done about adolescent care in Kenya, because we are not doing much for them, and it’s a critical age.

If you had three wishes, what would they be?

My current wish is about children, youth, and families in street situations who are on medication: I hope the HIV prevalence among them can reduce. I wish that people in street situations who are on HIV medication and who cannot afford a meal, can be given a meal a day and given their medication. I wish for them to have the opportunity to enroll in training and financial literacy classes.

Lonnie Embleton, PhD, MPH, is an Adolescent Health Advisor and Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Health System Design.

 

 

Ava Boal is an Associate Researcher.