Making Introductions

Public health with its traditional focus on altruism and aid, and business, in the diametric opposite corner, known to drive corporate hunger with its clamor for profits and growth- it's easy to see why one might think these fields are somewhat incompatible. But as a fresh graduate from an MPH/MBA dual degree program at Johns Hopkins University, I am keeping this blog in the hope of convincing you otherwise.

I grew up in Bangalore, India, today known to be the Silicon Valley of the East. But after some years of struggling to compete amidst the crowds of hard-working, success-driven citizens India boasts of, I found my way to the West, attempting to live the American Dream- I was hoping for a good education, a comfortable job and a Green Card somewhere in the mix. However, four years of college at Grinnell- a liberal haven if there ever was one- interrupted by a stint of public health work in Botswana, worked together to quickly change that goal for me. Today, my interests lie in contributing towards the effort to allow other parts of the world to have the chance to live their own versions of the American Dream, not needing to go as far as I went, looking for it- an ambitious goal I realize.

There is a glimmer of hope though. I believe that in order for us to successfully reach many of the health-related targets of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, public health efforts cannot continue in isolation from the macro-economy they rest within. In the intersection of public health and information technology, corporate social responsibility and private sector support, as well as the education of the masses to grasp the benefits of social enterprise, lie the answers to many of the 21st centuries health and development concerns. Like the internet accelerated globalization, I'm certain leveraging functional business models/tools/strategies to harness their benefits into health and development efforts can without a doubt accelerate the rate at which the world will rise out of poverty and sickness. This blog is my attempt to muse on this idea, and others, and perhaps even captivate you enough to be an advocate for thoughtfully integrating such efforts into your own work.