Presenter: Ananya Katepalli, Neurophysiology & Psychology, Global Public Health Scholars
For my practicum project, I completed my service under Reva Datar studying COVID-19 health behaviors in the regions of Sierra Leone and Tanzania. Specifically, my focus was concentrated on analyzing community level beliefs and behaviors within the region of Sierra Leone. Although our work was completely virtual and completed offline, I was able to receive a solid understanding of the inner workings and community dynamic that was present within the population of Sierra Leone. Our project was strictly concentrated on disadvantaged/vulnerable populations of Sierra Leone, and explored the implications of current government interventions regarding COVID-19 transmissions. Using data collection methods which I will explain further in-depth as I go along, I was able to gain an idea of how present government interventions put in place were either harmful in aspects to the community or helpful. For instance, wide reaching health protocols such as mandatory quarantining and testing, although helpful in reducing transmission and spread of infection, ultimately lead to negative consequences as individuals reported having unemployment issues and losing financial stability, as well as the current testing crisis being exacerbated due to improper access of healthcare. This specific project that I worked on consisted of several components; including interview-based questionnaires for individuals of this community in order to gain insight on their beliefs regarding current practices/problems, quantitative analysis and coding to synthesize the important information from interview transcripts, and thematic analysis to study major issues/areas gathered from the interviews. The qualitative and thematic analysis taken was extremely helpful in thinking about how to bridge gaps between community level socio-cultural impacts and disparities. This research is extremely vital in improving the overall public health of the community as it can increase general well being of the community and mitigate infectious disease rate/transmission. Gauging how to improve community level interventions promotes overall health equity among the population and can also reduce current disparities such as access to healthcare/dissemination of healthcare information in order to improve the general health of the community. My experience participating in this project was invaluable, as I was able to gain insight on the inner workings of public health research while recognizing how the tasks I completed had an observable impact.