Fellow follow up
In October 2019, a new intake of CRVS Fellows arrived in Melbourne. Over six weeks, they received training at the CRVS Bootcamp as well as support from University of Melbourne technical experts in their Fellowship projects. We reached out to three Fellows from October’s intake.
Md. Toufiq Shawon
Tofiq at Verbal Autopsy training in Bangladesh, Nilphamari district
Toufiq is a Government Medical Officer at the Trishal Health Complex in Bangladesh. He has worked with the D4H Initiative in the past as a Verbal Autopsy (VA) trainer.
As he was already quite familiar with CRVS processes, Tofiq spent his time learning about VIPER to analyse SmartVA data from Bangladesh.
Toufiq mentions that since completing the Fellowship, he has advanced his skills in article writing. He has become enthusiastic about presenting results from the project and has endeavoured to produce new articles about Bangladeshi health data.
Dr. May Thu Zaw
Dr John Hart (Fellow supervisor), Dr May Thu Zaw (Fellow) and
Dr Tim Adair (Fellowship Director), the University of Melbourne
May is the Deputy Director for the Planning Division for the Department of Medical Service at the Ministry of Health and Sports (MOHS) in Myanmar. Her Fellowship analysed mortality data from three hospitals.
May mentions that since the Fellowship, she has incorporated monitoring and evaluation (M&E) activities into interventions in her region. Additionally, she has recently applied for funding from the MOHS for implementation research, which will improve Cause of Death (COD) accuracy in her region.
May’s favourite part of the Fellowship program was the one-on-one ANACONDA training from Dr. Lene Mikkelsen.
Dr. Suresh Mehata
Dr. Suresh Mehata, the University of Melbourne
Suresh is the Chief of the Monitoring and Evaluation section for the Policy, Planning and Monitoring division at the Ministry of Health and Population in Nepal.
Suresh’s Fellowship focused on developing a framework for strengthening COD data in Nepal. He is preparing to integrate these interventions into his current role.
His key takeaways from the Fellowship were the lectures from Dr. Tim Adair and guidance Suresh received in proposal writing.
"I'm excited about Bloomberg's program which is going to be
implemented in Nepal near future" - Dr Suresh Mehata