Episode 14: Community Engagement in Global Health

Imagine A World

Zahra Fazal (2022 cohort) imagines a world where communities across Africa have an equal stake in setting the global health agenda. She joins hosts Willie Thompson, Taylor Goss, and guest host Takondwa Semphere to chat about her experience growing up in a scenic town in Tanzania, leaving home at 13 years old, addressing global health issues through a social epidemiology lens, and the danger of a single story in sub-Saharan Africa. Plus, her many creative endeavors, from creative writing to earring-making to crocheting!

Highlights from the episode:

• (7:12) Zahra’s experience growing up in Morogoro, Tanzania, living alone in the city at age 12, and deciding to pursue education beyond secondary school
• (17:30) The role that art has played in Zahra’s life in carrying home with her and reminding her of the community that took care of her growing up
• (23:01) What moving from Tanzania to Canada and then the US has been like from Zahra, and how she grounds her work in her experiences growing up and those of her family, especially her little sister
• (31:31) Zahra’s Imagine a World Statement about communities in Africa having a stake in setting the global health agenda, and how that focus led her to focus on social epidemiology in her time at Stanford and her thesis project on health outcomes for people with albinism in Tanzania
• (43:02) How Zahra’s experiences with poetry and literature shaped her interactions with the world, from reading voraciously as a child, writing her own stories on Wattpad, and creating an advocacy song for her work
• (56:10) Zahra’s improbable facts about crocheting and board games and advice to Knight-Hennessy applicants and scholars about the importance of mentorship