Evan Doyle, ‘13
Why did you choose to come to UMR? My cohort was the first batch of undergraduates to undergo the integrated curriculum and innovative approaches to teaching and learning, which factored heavily into my decision to come to UMR. The opportunity to be part of such a new and unique undertaking was too good to pass up.
What did your Capstone experience at UMR involve? For me, the Capstone experience was an open-ended opportunity to explore anything and everything I was interested in outside of the classroom. I spent four months in Ecuador conducting a qualitative research study on barriers in access to health care services. These interviews with health care workers, along with the time spent volunteering in clinics across the country, provided me with an in-depth perspective on how a nationalized health care system functions. I then spent a National Student Exchange semester at Queens College and pursued two part-time internships in New York City. The first was with the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Department at Latino Commission on AIDS, a nonprofit that provides health education, HIV prevention services, capacity building, advocacy and health behavioral research for Latino communities. During this time, I evaluated the impact of a city-wide outreach campaign through bilingual street-intercept surveys and cross-borough data analysis. My second internship was with the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan think tank. My job was to research and draft briefs on dual use research of concern and climate change’s effect on global health in preparation for upcoming roundtable meetings and publications by the Senior Fellow, respectively. I also tracked and maintained an online interactive map of international vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, which is still active and currently run by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
How did your Capstone experience prepare you for your future in what you’re currently doing? Through my Capstone, I discovered my career interests lay at the intersection of data, policy and international travel. In all honesty though, a series of ~4 month experiences were never going to provide the technical competencies I needed to land my dream job right out of college. Rather, aspects of each helped me learn which skills I needed to develop further to be successful. Having a preliminary understanding of M&E systems, analytical software and how data can be used to improve health programming led me to pursue a job at a research company in Saint Paul after graduating from UMR. Observing how politics and evidence are intertwined in global health policy development led me to approach my grad school thesis project pragmatically, incorporating both aspects into it design, which culminated in a national change to blood donation policy in the United Kingdom. Parsing out a foreign health system's complexities taught me that national policies don't always implement uniformly, and oftentimes the people with the best insights into breakdowns in equity are at the frontline. This perspective allowed me to add substantial value to my job after grad school, which involved assisting the Ministry of Health in Eswatini to understand and address their key bottlenecks in implementing a universal health coverage policy. Above all, I think undertaking such a diverse array of experiences for my Capstone helped me realize the endless opportunities that exist outside of 'traditional' clinical career paths. I'm grateful for using that open ended opportunity to thoroughly explore my interests, as it led me to pursue roles later on that I didn't even know existed during my time at UMR.
What are you currently doing? I work for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as a Strategy Development Officer based in Geneva, Switzerland. The Global Fund is a multilateral partnership made up of governments, civil society, technical agencies and the private sector, which mobilizes and invests more than $4 billion a year to support health programs run by local experts in more than 100 countries. The Global Fund Strategy is a multiyear road map for the partnership’s future, setting out priorities for how we can accelerate progress against the three diseases and improve global health. My team is tasked with leading the process to develop our next strategy, which will begin in 2023. In addition to my BS in Health Science from UMR, I also hold an MSc in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.