Second Day at Work

I had a great second day at work. I got to interview four different JBCP stakeholders, all of whom offered very different perspectives on the organization and the state of breast cancer awareness and prevention in Jordan. It touched on so many aspects of my Harvard experience: international health issues, economic development, budgeting, social enterprise, leadership, multi-sector partnerships, corporate philanthropy, and education. I was even more grateful to have had that experiece and to meet so many incredible people with different interests, particularly the Zuckerman Fellows.

One of the most surprising, and heartbreaking, issues was the state of the diagnostic infrastructure. Only the richest private hospitals have state-of-the-art digital mammography machines with diagnostic software that can help detect cancer at the earliest possible stages with high degrees of accuracy. The few public government-run clinics and hospitals that do have mammography machines mostly have analog machines that use old-fashioned film developing processes that produce images of varying, and significantly lower, quality. Each digital machine costs about $500,000 Jordan Dinars, or about $700,000 U.S. Dollars, and the cost of replacing every analog machine in the country, then adding enough to ensure access, is astronomical.

My new friend and JBCP intern, Z, organized a charity banquet that raised enough money ($40,000 Jordan Dinars) to purchase a lower-end analog machine to be used in the Palestinian Territories. It was successfully installed and later destroyed in a bombing raid.

Furthermore, the clinic staff members do not have the proper training required to conduct a complete exam or develop the highest-quality image. Improper use of chemicals produce subpar images that lead to false positive or false negative diagnoses. JBCP is working with a variety of partners to address all of those problems, but there is a staggering amount of work to be done.

Everyone at the office is super-friendly, but I wanted to be sure that I am not just liked, but respected. I made it my early-morning mission to knock the socks off my supervisor with the quality of my work. During our pre-interview briefing, she was surprised by how much research I had done and my grasp of the key roles that each person plays. When we met to discuss my pre-interview notes and questions, she nodded approvingly. When I returned from my interviews, she was smiling warmly.

Tomorrow, I'm taking it up a notch by being even better-prepared and bringing baklava for the staff.