Going the distance for public health
Vandana Sharma is a global health researcher with expertise in designing and implementing impact evaluations, randomized controlled trials, and capacity building efforts in development and humanitarian contexts.
Her public health and medical work focuses primarily on HIV/AIDS, maternal and child health, and gender issues. As a research consultant at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Sharma conducted impact evaluations of programs run in partnership with governments or NGOs across the world.
She has also studied intimate partner violence (IPV) and initiated projects to help victims. “A growing body of evidence suggests that IPV is the most common form of violence in humanitarian crisis settings,” she wrote in an op-ed.
Many of these factors come into play in immigrant communities, too, and Dr Sharma, who is implementing a project with World Bank funding among Somali refugees to prevent and reduce intimate partner violence, hopes to see a wider implementation where needed.
She was born and raised in St. Thomas, a small town near London, Ontario, to parents who moved to Canada in the mid-70s. At the time, there were just a handful of desi families in town and nine at her school, but she faced no major issues or challenges.
“It was a beautiful, safe community with lots of outdoor space. My teachers were incredible.”
A medical doctor by training – she earned her Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the University of Western Ontario – she had decided very early that she wanted to work on international health.
“I imagined myself working with Doctors Without Borders, in conflict settings and in humanitarian crisis situations,” she says.
But electives in Ethiopia and Guatemala had her leaning towards population health and public health.
She tells young women who ask for her guidance on how to succeed to follow their guts.
“There could be pressure from family and others about what you should be doing. I was asked even by my medical professors why I was not practising medicine. It’s ‘not normal,’ some said! But this is what I wanted to do. Think outside the box. There are millions of opportunities out there – pick wisely about what you want to do with your career and life.
“And get out there and meet people. Talk to them. Learn. My greatest learning comes from those around me. A woman in a village in India or a research expert, they all make me who I am.
“I went back to Ethiopia and talked to people who had participated in our earlier programs and when they get emotional, telling me how it has improved their condition, then I know my work, my life, has a purpose.”