I am pulled into the rural health clinic and my half-unconscious

state is knocked out of me by the stench of vomit, human waste, urine,

and rotting flesh. The villagers hold me up as I vomit again, but, like
the past four hours, there is nothing left for me to throw up, the result
of drinking unboiled village water, dehydration and heat exhaustion. I
remember that this hospital doesn’t have a regular doctor. I’m dragged
into a room, overflowing with women: some bleeding profusely, some
giving birth, others screaming in pain. After being pushed onto a dirty
bed next to a moaning woman, hours of unknown injections and waves
in and out of consciousness, I’m told by who I think is a nurse that I am
well enough to leave, despite the fact that I don’t feel well enough to
stand. As I am helped out of the clinic I look back and realize the
woman next to me is dead.
It was not until this experience, something that took place when I
was an Indicorps Fellow stationed in a village on the border of
Bangladesh and India, that I truly understood how disparities in health
are space related. My own traumatic experience in a health clinic, the
death of the woman next to me and countless other women in that
clinic, could have been prevented. These events happened because
the clinic was four hours away from Kolkata, where most of the areas
doctors were located.
Pursuing a Masters of Urban Planning and a Masters of Public
Health is directly related to these experiences. That year, it became all
too clear to me that good health is essential to the livelihood of a
village, a region and nation. However, I watched villagers suffer from
preventable diseases and illnesses, rampant from weak infrastructure
and absent health practitioners. I observed the concentration of
doctors and nurses in Kolkata, where the pull of amenities like running
water and electricity was too strong, preventing them from rural work.
In India, I discovered my desire to roll up my sleeves and
improve urban centers actively working on how to improve its links
with the rural areas. At NYU’s Urban Planning program, I delved into
these links, placing them contextually in the international urban
development program, focusing on how space shaped development.
While there, I was contracted by the InterAmerican Development Bank
to analyze ways in which access to water shaped opportunities of
urban and rural citizens. Soon after, I worked with the Clinton
Foundation to explore ways urban wastewater could be
managed/treated, developing a strategy that will be piloted in the
Foundation’s “C40” cities.
At Columbia’s School of Public Health, I have begun to
understand the nuances of health behavior, and how that can be used
towards effective health education. Concurrently, I’ve completed an
internship at UN-Habitat, where I gained a solid grasp of the UN system
and its work around the world. I hope to continue that understanding
with the KCCI internship this summer.