5 Ways to Fake Global Health Knowledge

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-01-21 06:53:00 UTC
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Maybe you’re new to the field, and you need to prove your skills. Maybe you just need to make people listen to you for a while. Whatever your motivation, here’s your guide.

How to fake global health knowledge:

    1. Refer to the global burden of disease. That’s just the technical term for everything that makes people less healthy (illness, disability, old age, malnutrition) all over the world, totaled up. Talking about it makes you seem like a sophisticated thinker who realizes that everything is related.
    2. Talk about health care financing. (I discovered this by accident, when I was working on a health care financing project) Ask who pays health care providers – the government, or is it private? Ask where the public money comes from – some kind of tax? A public insurance arrangement? A line item in the federal, state or local budget? No one outside the health financing world ever knows the answers to these questions, so asking makes you seem very clued in.
    3. Use a lot of acronyms. There are so many long names and concepts in this field that acronyms are a way of life. Try MCH (maternal and child health), AID (The United States Agency for International Development), ARIs (acute respiratory infections), BCG (Bacille Calmette-Guerin, the Tuberculosis vaccine), MDR and XDR TB (multi-drug resistant and extremely drug resistant tuberculosis.), and IMR (infant mortality rate). Warning – don’t guess at the acronyms. That will ruin the effect. If you don’t know, just refer to the general concept. Instead of saying “infant mortality rate,” say “how many children die.” People will think you are just being folksy and direct.
    4. Never call yourself an expert. If you actually are a technical expert, just say that you are interested in X topic, or an advisor on X subject. That’s how the real experts do it. Example, “My special interest is Adolescent HIV.” For bonus points, mention how you are always eager to learn more and show interest in everybody’s lame armchair theory on your subject field.
    5. Talk about behavior change. It’s just a fancy way of saying people need to do change how they do things, but since just about every health problem requires people to change what they do, it is a topic of constant relevance.

I know I must have missed a few. Comment and let me know your best tips for faking global health knowledge. If we’ve got enough additions, I’ll do a follow-up post.

Alanna Shaikh
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