My name is Jennifer Kizza and I began working as a Desk Officer for Healthcare Information For All (HIFA) in March of 2017. As a Desk Officer, I assist HIFA with tasks such as membership recruitment, financial support, and collaborations with other organizations. On April 24th 2018, Dr. David Musoke (Lecturer and Researcher at Makerere University School of Public Health – MakSPH) and I gave a presentation about HIFA at MakSPH in Kampala, Uganda. I have to extend many thanks to Dr. Musoke for publicizing this meeting so well and for encouraging attendance amongst colleagues and students. The event had great attendance with individuals ranging from current students to professors and faculty of the School of Public Health present. We also had a few attendees who were already members of HIFA.
For this presentation, we discussed HIFA’s mission to “create a world where people are no longer dying for a lack of knowledge,” how HIFA is trying to achieve this goal, and how others can join HIFA in pursuit of the goal. Dr. Musoke additionally gave a wonderful personal anecdote of his experiences with HIFA and the Community Health Workers (CHWs) project at both the local and global scale. In particular, he mentioned how HIFA was instrumental in organizing the first international symposium on CHWs held in Kampala, Uganda in 2017 which included a 6-weeks’ thematic HIFA discussion on CHWs. Afterwards, we left time for questions from the audience, generating great discussion with various inquiries as well as general feedback about HIFA. We additionally had a signup sheet where we took information from attendees who would like to join the forum. I am pleased to say we had over 30 individuals interested in joining HIFA following our presentation.
Overall, the event was a great success. I must say thank you to Makerere University School of Public Health for organizing and hosting a great session! I also highly encourage other HIFA members to consider similarly giving presentations about HIFA amongst their own networks. We at HIFA are also more than happy to support members if they choose to prepare a presentation. Notably, HIFA already has wonderful resources including prepared PowerPoint presentations, leaflets, and signup sheets available to assist in presentation preparation. We also always welcome suggestions for collaboration or other forums in which HIFA may work together with you and/or your organization. I personally left our presentation at Makerere University School of Public Health feeling energized and hopeful for the change we can make in the world, and I am more than excited to keep working with you all towards our common goal!
