Indira Behara: On the Fast Track

With Commencement happening this week, members of the Class of 2015 reflect on their time as Mailman School students and share their plans for the future.

Since completing here Accelerated MPH in 2015, Indira Behara was recruited to an international consulting firm. Only a few months later, she was promoted, and is now in charge of the organization’s tuberculosis projects. Behara explains how the Mailman School helped her find this exceptional opportunity:

Growing up in Mumbai, I spent my whole life wanting to be a doctor, and that’s what I became. I’ve loved every moment, but after working in both public and private sector hospitals here in India, I realized that the problem wasn’t the number and quality of the access points for the 30-odd percent of our population in urban settings. The problem was a far greater and more widespread systemic issue: a majority of our largely semi-urban or rural population do not have access to affordable, good quality, effective care. That increasing commodification of health is creating a system which is not responsive to the needs of the population, and will in fact end up hindering the progress of a developing country like India.

I decided to make the switch to public health, and from the moment I read about the accelerated MPH with the General Public Health track at Mailman, I knew that this would be the place for me. I could grow into my new avatar as a public health practitioner and define my own skills and identity. Coupled with the amazing experiences of the faculty, the diversity of students and all the course offerings, the Mailman School is in the public health capital of country and the ultimate melting pot of the world, New York.

Before coming to Mailman, healthcare was a unidimensional concept that I defined as just clinical medicine. Now I have a more holistic view. The combination of what I learned, along with my medical background, understanding of health systems, and communication skills have given me a more well-rounded approach. When I realized what health systems strengthening reallywas and that it was the niche I’d been longing for my whole life, it was such an “aha moment.”

Last summer, I was recruited by Global Health Strategies (GHS), an international health consulting firm which specializes in advocacy and communications in the U.S., India, Brazil, China, and pretty soon, in Africa too. I had heard about GHS at the Mailman career fairs and seen their postings online through CareerLink. But I would not have been able to do any of it without the constant encouragement, guidance, and help from Heather Krasna in Career Services.

I joined GHS as a manager of the tuberculosis project in New Delhi in November 2014, and was promoted to senior manager in February. I currently head the TB project in India and act as global coordinator for the TB projects that are based in our other offices. We are the advocacy and communications partner for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and in India, we work a great deal with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in order to enable policy change for improved TB prevention and control.

My job is exciting, fast-paced, and allows me not only to think of the big picture of health but actually create strategies to address them. I get to interact with veterans of the public health sector on a daily basis and have already learned so much about the challenges of changing policy. Looking ahead, I just want to go with the flow and see where life takes me in my quest for universal health coverage.