Global Health Fellows: Partnering to Strengthen Health Systems
Recently, Ellen Gerstein, Pfizer's Senior Director of Digital Communications, visited Africa as part of our Global Fellows Program. She shares her experience in this article.
At Pfizer, we’re driven by our Purpose—to deliver breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. That Purpose has never been more clear to me than during my experience partnering with North Star Alliance through Global Health Fellows—Pfizer’s signature skills-based volunteering program.
Since 2003, Global Health Fellows has enabled colleagues to lend their skills to global health organizations working to strengthen health systems and close the health equity gap. Over the last two decades, more than 850 Pfizer colleagues have contributed their skills to capacity-building initiatives, collectively volunteering over 420,000 hours to 110 partners across 51 countries.
Through these skills-sharing projects, partner organizations gain valuable expertise and build capacity—in areas such as supply chain, marketing and communications, digital, and beyond. At the same time, Global Health Fellows like me learn, grow, and use our skills in new ways.
In August 2023, alongside two of my colleagues, I participated in a hybrid Global Health Fellows project. Over 12 weeks, our team worked with North Star Alliance—a non-profit organization operating in 10 countries across Africa, which seeks to provide healthcare to mobile workers and the communities they interact with—to support the development of a new strategic plan to effectively monitor and measure the organization’s impact and help advance their mission to provide quality healthcare to mobile workers in the community.
“On behalf of North Star Alliance, I’d like to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your visit to our office and the Blue Box clinics. Your presence was inspiring, and it meant a great deal to all of us. Your ability to connect with us on a personal level as well as your expertise in your respective fields and willingness to share your knowledge and experiences made us feel genuinely appreciated.”
– Eva Mwai, Director, North Star Alliance
Creating lasting impact
Our work kicked off with virtual meetings, where we were able to build a strong foundation and better understand North Star Alliance’s needs to identify how we could best support their goals. That collaboration culminated with a weeklong trip to their offices in Nairobi, where we saw firsthand the impact they’re making in their communities.
North Star Alliance’s signature program is the Blue Box clinic. These are converted shipping containers that are placed near major roads, border crossings, and transit towns to deliver healthcare to medically underserved populations, including truck drivers and sex workers, in areas with limited or no access to services. Local clinics offer, for example, HIV prevention, and treatment services as well as general health services.
During our time with North Star Alliance, a client of the local clinic wasn’t feeling well and was taken in for screening and was ultimately diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, North Star Alliance was able to start her cancer treatments in their clinic—a critical service, particularly in medically underserved communities where breast cancer diagnoses are often delayed because the community does not have the access to basic breast cancer screening and care.
Partnering to strengthen health systems
Experiences like this have provided me with countless lessons that I’ve been able to apply to my work at Pfizer. Since they say a picture can speak a thousand words, I'm sharing three photos and lessons that I’ll remember for a lifetime:
- Leadership matters. This was our first meeting with the North Star Alliance team at their offices in Nairobi, Kenya and sitting in the back is Eva Mwai, Director at North Star Alliance. Eva is an absolute force of nature. She told us that North Star Alliance didn’t have the in-house expertise to build out their strategic plan and it was our privilege to be able to help bring her vision to life.
- Ingenuity comes in all forms. In sub-Saharan Africa, mobile workers, including long-distance truck drivers and sex workers, face barriers to accessing timely healthcare. North Star Alliance accompanied us to a clinic strategically placed in a high trafficked area to provide critical health services without prejudice or shame—offering HIV prevention and treatment services, peer education and outreach, and more.
- Collaboration goes both ways. Just before we departed, we grabbed a quick photo with the whole team. As Global Health Fellows, we’re able to learn and expand our horizons, while also offering partner organizations access to resources they might not otherwise have. The experience has changed my perspective on the work we do, and I hope our contributions will give North Star Alliance improved ability to build for the future.
Building on Pfizer’s legacy to be a force for good
For 175 years, Pfizer has been a trusted partner in healthcare—discovering, developing, and delivering medical breakthroughs to patients. The Global Health Fellows program aims to bring that commitment to communities around the world by supporting projects that help address complex global health challenges. I’m so grateful and proud to be part of this inspiring skills-based volunteering program and contribute to Pfizer’s legacy of being a force for good.
