Trendsetters and trailblazers – these are #UCIFierceFemales

"I needed to find others with similar goals, to build teams to strengthen medical education and health systems, and to target efforts where they had a chance to make long-lasting impacts."

Writer: Lilibeth Garcia

When Dr. Cynthia Haq accepted the assignment to train village health workers in Uganda to prevent and manage common illnesses, she could not have predicted the challenges she would soon face. Upon arrival at the Kasangati Health Centre, reality struck. She was the only doctor caring for a rural population of about half a million people. The country was recovering from a brutal civil war, and the health center had not had a full-time physician in over a decade. In a community ravaged by malaria, tuberculosis and HIV, resources such as electricity, running water, medical supplies and drugs were scarce.

Conditions virtually never seen in U.S. children often took the lives of toddlers – 1 out of 3 Ugandan children died before the age of 5. When Haq could not save a 2-year-old from measles pneumonia, a disease that could have easily been prevented with immunization, she resolved to tackle the problem at its very root. Medical care was necessary but not enough.

“If I wanted to make a difference, I needed to look beyond individual patients to design and lead educational programs; to cultivate skills to influence systems of medical education; to recruit, train and retain motivated family physicians and other health professionals where they are needed most; and to raise my voice as an advocate for justice in healthcare,” Haq says. “I needed to find others with similar goals, to build teams to strengthen medical education and health systems, and to target efforts where they had a chance to make long-lasting impacts.”

Her early experiences abroad transformed her career as a family physician. Haq spent the next phase of her career as a doctor-educator in Wisconsin, working with local leaders to promote community health, in addition to seeing patients “from womb to tomb.” She launched health programs in Pakistan, Uganda and Ethiopia – with the help of the World Health Organization and governmental and nongovernmental agencies – and eventually became founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Global Health. Currently, Haq chairs and is a clinical professor in the Department of Family Medicine at UCI’s School of Medicine, where she oversees medical education and primary healthcare programs to train family physicians to serve in communities near and far.

Original Article: https://specialreports.news.uci.edu/womens-history-month/