This past week, our group went to the Caribbean Women’s Health Association. The Caribbean Women’s Health Association is a small nonprofit organization that was founded 30 years ago by a group of nurses at Brookdale Hospital in Brownsville. Initially the focus was made to target Caribbean women who were not getting adequate prenatal care. 30 years later, the center has greatly expanded its reach.
The center has three major departments which deal with immigration, maternal health, and HIV. Amanda Nace, the Program Coordinator told us about some of the programs the center has spearheaded. Health, Hip-hop, and Hoops, SISTAS, and Brooklyn Beatz Booze are three programs in particular concerning HIV and binge drinking. These programs aim to combat public health problems while empowering the population at hand through community wide programs. Aside from these targeted programs, the center provides conferences and symposiums for the public as well. Recently, the center held a symposium entitled “Who Runs the World? Girls” which was a day long conference in which 100 girls met and learned about health and health empowerment.
The center provides immigration services and HIV testing on site, and works in cooperation with other partner agencies to offer other services and programs. Amanda stressed the importance of grant writing and acquisition of funding. As a small organization, Amanda commented on how she was responsible for a large number of tasks, from creating materials to give out to sitting in on board meetings. When we asked whether the target for the agency was only West Indian women, Amanda explained that the agency is in fact grappling with whether they should change their name to increase their reach. The local population just so happens to be West Indian women anyways, but the agencies reach transcends all of New York City.
Amanda actually talked to us about her own individual experiences in the field. As a public health professional, Amanda currently works multiple jobs. Aside from her work at the center, Amanda also serves as a doula for women who need assistance and cannot afford the traditional cost of doula services. Doula services are not actually limited to births, but also include abortions and postpartum services as well. Additionally she serves as an evaluation consultant for Merck. The particular project she is working on has to do with reducing maternal mortality rates. The focus of her studies locally are women in the Harlem community and how to best assess their needs when designing programs.
NYU Public Health Professions and Practice 
Continuing to learn about public health work always makes working in the field appear more of a challenge. Although I am truly passionate about the mission of public health and beginning my professional career in the field, it is daunting to learn about the day to day struggles of working in this discipline. The presenter, Amanda, not only struggles to propose and write grants so that the non-profit she works for has enough funding, but she also has a wide range of responsibilities at the organization as well as works two other jobs. At every organization that I have interned with over my four years at NYU from a small for-profit company focusing on social entrepreneurship to a local health department, grant writing has always been a focus and something that I have assisted my superiors with. Public health is full of dedicated individuals who wish to make a difference and reach as many populations and people as they can. However, despite how well planned and organized a program or intervention is, it always comes down to funding and resources. The true logistics of this reality is something I have only experienced through my internships and that is, in my opinion, discussed infrequently throughout the public health undergraduate degree at NYU. This course, Public Health Profession and Practice, aims to show us what careers in the public health field really look like. This seems to be the case at Caribbean Women’s Health Association. The presenter emphasized the importance of this struggle for funding. Furthermore, she explained that she has a wide range of duties in her current position. This is something I have also experienced. As someone interested in health education, I currently work for a small for-profit focused on providing healthy school lunches in NYC. They also do their best to provide health education on cooking nutritious meals at home. The entire health education department is run by one woman and three interns of which I am one. It is clear from my experience, as well as the post about this weeks site visit, that often individuals in this field have to take on a huge range of work due to lack of funding or positions at their organization. Amanda also seems to have explained that she is forced to work multiple jobs in the public health field. As we have discussed in class and addressed on the midterm, the field of public health has very low retention rates due to a lack of competitive salaries. This site visit and the presentation given by Amanda demonstrates a real life example of this problem. Through this course as well as individual experiences in the field that I’m sure everyone in this class has participated in, us as public health undergraduates can see the true struggle that working in public health can pose.