Carl Mhina clearly is on his way to becoming a physician-scientist and a grant-funded independent researcher. He has an MD from the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College in Tanzania, studied for his Master’s in Public Health from the University of Cape Town in South Africa with a scholarship from the Duke Global Health Institute (DGHI), and just graduated with his MS in Population Health Sciences. His journey will be near complete when he starts his PhD in Population Health Sciences in the Fall of 2022.
Carl will focus on implementation science because he wants to see the results of his work have a real-world impact. His previous experience in the field included working with DGHI in researching the social behaviors of patients with HIV and their barriers to accessing care. He is developing a sustainable health service delivery model where patients at risk of HIV can access PReP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) at urgent care clinics. Healthcare in Tanzania relies on preventive medicine to advance positive health outcomes. Carl says, “My PhD in population health will provide multiple ways to view and solve health problems back home.”
Implementation Science is in its infancy in Tanzania. So to become an expert in the field, Carl knew he had to come to the U.S. He learned of Duke’s population health degree through a long-standing collaboration between Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, where he is a physician, and DGHI. The decision to leave Tanzania wasn’t easy. He didn’t have much time to convince his wife of the benefits of studying for his MS and PhD in population health—and he had little time to tell his funders he would be attending. But with so many positives, they decided to move to Durham. Carl’s spouse, Joyce, has found her own life in the Triangle working as a pharmacist and studying for a Master’s in Pharmaceutical Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill’s Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She has even started to engage in her own research.
Carl says it’s important that his work serves a greater purpose and that his interests and values align. When Carl returns to Tanzania he wants to develop initiatives that can be implemented and that are sustainable. Because Tanzania aims for a universal healthcare system, and care is delivered differently than in the U.S., Carl says he will have “to innovate and not imitate and ensure initiatives are context-specific.”
During the MS in Population Health, Carl was exposed to a variety of research methods and had access to centers like Population Health’s QualCore, a team within the department that provides expertise and leadership in qualitative research design, implementation, analysis, and interpretation. But it was through his stakeholder and community engagement classes, Carl and his wife had the idea to start a nonprofit initiative called USTAWI (Swahili for wellness) that works with orphans and vulnerable children, many of whom have lost their parents to HIV. The initiative lines up with their personal values to give back generously. The nonprofit has three pillars— social, physical, and intellectual wellness. Social wellness comes through mentorship, physical wellness through health, and intellectual wellness through a recently built e-library. Constructed from a shipping container, the e-library will also be used as a coaching hub for 70 orphaned and vulnerable children in Moshi, Tanzania.
Carl is philosophical about his journey and feels it has a purpose and that things usually align in ways that are intended. He has big goals for when he returns to Tanzania. His MS and PhD in Population Health Sciences will give him a multidimensional approach, in how he looks at his research and how he views health problems and thinks about solutions. He sees population health as “a discipline that fills in the gaps and tries to address population health problems and disparities.” This will be useful to healthcare delivery in Tanzania where resources can be in short supply and outcomes are so important.