AAS -District Program Coordinator role- solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform

Questions/Instructions:

How have you contributed to solving a challenge and to implementing change or reform?
Be specific and include:
- What aspect/s of your leadership knowledge, skills and practice you consider to be well established and effective?
- Which people or organizations you worked with to solve the problem?
- What creative methods were used?

2000 characters
One of the essays for Australia Awards Scholarship

IMPROVING TUBERCULOSIS CASE DETECTION AND TREATMENT

My response:

Being a public health professional, I wholeheartedly believe that positive change in the community is possible. To achieve this change is not about what you do or who you are but about your true commitment and solidarity with local communities.

In my role as district program coordinator (DPC) for Birat Nepal Medical Trust (BNMT, bnmt.org.np), I have built an extensive collaboration with Nepalese government officials, local authorities, and key stakeholders. Also, the strong community engagement particularly in vulnerable settings has fulfill my dream of working with hard to reach communities to improve their health, including through TB case detection.

Despite having larger numbers of migrant workers, homeless people, and the vulnerable indigenous Chepang people, the TB program in Chitwan district of Nepal which I support (population 700,000) has a high proportion of missed TB cases. Tuberculosis in the district span across these populations. This means vulnerable people with TB never come to seek healthcare because of lack of awareness, education, or money. To address these challenges, I coordinated with local management committees of the metropolitan office to connect with laborers and homeless people. I proactively designed contact tracing plan and deployed additional field staff to provide enhanced support to these groups outside of normal work hours. We also worked with local communities and healthcare facilities to try and coordinate visits to reach the Chepang communities who live in remote areas. With the help of proactive field staff, we increased TB case notification by 22% and managed to meet the district and WHO's target.

This was not an easy task to achieve due to length of TB treatment duration, not adequately trained health workers, poor counseling and support, and poverty and under-nutrition. I cannot see the certain situation and leave it thinking it is normal. To further improve not just TB case detection but also adherence to TB treatment, I worked with local and regional groups to provide people with TB with a pillbox, which carried two weeks' worth of medicines to their home, enhanced frequency of supervisory visits, and conscientiously formalised recording and reporting of patients' progress.

Finally, my technical ability and determination to take part in TB review meetings led me to a position in which I performed accurate and reliable TB data analysis, which was fed back to the national program. In essence, we are continuously supporting the government's initiatives and strategies to improve the health status of the country.

@TaraAryal23
Hello,

I think that your essay has answered all the questions quite well, you showed your leadership skill in the task and you describe what you did in specific details.

I think it would be good if you also narrate your journey a little more specifically in this part, like what you did specifically just maybe give one example or so.

"I have built an extensive collaboration with Nepalese government officials, local authorities, and key stakeholders. Also, the strong community engagement particularly in vulnerable settings has fulfill my dream of working with hard to reach communities to improve their health, including through TB case detection."

overall, I think your essay is quite descriptive.

Good luck for your application!!y

Paragraph 1: Fulfilled* , working hard/working with heart?

I think overall the essay is very well written as it shows that you are capable of leading and problem solving. Good job Tara!

The one flaw that I can see in your response is that you failed to establish what part of your leadership knowledge, skills and practice you consider to be well established and effective. You spoke about how you dealt with the problem at great length and implied your leadership skills throughout the essay. However, you should also mentioned which of your leadership skills you were not proficient at when the program started, but you eventually fortified throughout the time spent dealing with the problem, thus establishing those as your most useful and effective skills. Not all parts of the skills presentation should be equal in the presentation. You must highlight a specific leadership obstacle that you had to overcome. By doing so, you will better exemplify the strong development of your leadership skills and why these may be useful to you in the future. You should also skip the first 2 sentences. The word limited essays require a direct response approach, without word count wasted on introductory elements. The reviewer just needs to read your response directly. He has no time for flowery introductions. He has 1 thousand other applications to read. Don't waste his time with useless introductions. Just respond directly to the prompt.