Interview with a Global Health Professional: Early Childhood Development Specialist

This week's interview is with Anna Smeby, an Early Childhood Development Specialist with UNICEF:

1. What do you do?

I am an Early Childhood Development Specialist, which can mean a lot of different things to different people. For me it means working with Governments, with other organizations, and within my own organization to identify what each sector (Health, Education, Social Welfare, etc.) can do to address the unique needs of young children - so that all children can not only survive, but grow and develop to their full potential.

2. Where do you work? Is it a company, an NGO, part of a government, or something else?

I have always worked in the field of early childhood, though in a variety of roles, starting out with community-based organizations in immigrant communities in the US. I have been working with UNICEF for about 3 years, divided among 5 different offices including Headquarters, Regional Offices and, currently, a Country Office.

3. How did you end up working in global health? Was it always what you wanted to do?

When I was a kid, I wanted to become an obstetrician - and while I suppose this holds some relevance to my current career, I certainly can't claim to always having wanted to work in health. In fact, the issue that became my first passion - due largely to a college semester spent teaching primary school in rural Central America - was education, and its linkages to social and economic inequality in particular. A later experience working with Head Start (a free preschool program for low-income children in the US) and Early Head Start (for families and children birth to 3) showed me the extent of disparity already in place on the first day of school - and the complexity of inputs, far beyond preschool, that children need to develop and get ready for school.

While I can't quite say that I properly belong to the field of "global health," I can say that there was a day when I realized that the success of the Head Start model lies not in the provision of quality preschool alone to vulnerable children, but in the provision of quality preschool, family support, nutrition workshops for families, vision and hearing tests, toothbrushing and hygiene education, immunization campaigns, nutritious meals, growth monitoring, home visits and more to vulnerable children and their families. With this came the realization that I had a lot to learn, in particular on child health and nutrition, in order to effectively support early childhood development.

4. What is your favorite thing about working in global health?

Given the above, it should not be surprising that some favorite moments are seeing preschool teachers help parents check if child immunizations are complete, health workers encouraging and supporting families in responsive feeding, anyone from social workers to emergency response personnel working to mitigate the damaging effects for child development of maternal depression and constant stress in traumatic environments, medical faculty explaining that providing nutrition and stimulation to malnourished children is more effective than nutrition alone, and at any level from national policy to local implementation, seeing recognition dawn that more holistic approaches really do work better, and really can be operationalized.

5. What is your least favorite part?

I guess my least favorite part is how hard doing all of this really is. Integrating different sectoral components in policies and programmes can feel impossible, and building coordination across sectors can be similarly daunting. But when we make the assumption that if each sector provides the little piece of services for which it is responsible, and that the child will eventually get the whole pie, we are too often wrong. This results in missed opportunities for the survival, health, growth and complete development of our youngest children - especially the most marginalized - and so it is worth it to wake up and go to work each day, and to keep trying.