Profiles

Raana Zahid, MD, MPH : Global Health Practitioner

Zahid on her journey in Global Health (Audio 1 minute 42 seconds)

Throughout her medical training in Pakistan, Raana Zahid imagined she would someday work in a clinic. Instead, her education in gynecology, obstetrics, and medicine led her to the slums and villages of Pakistan, where those in need of medical treatment would sometimes travel for hours to makeshift clinics.

As a field medical officer, for a local NGO in Rawalpindi District called Behbud Association of Pakistan, Zahid worked for seven years focusing on family planning services in underserved communities.  Fueled by the injustices of a male-dominated society where women needed written consent from their husbands to receive contraceptive surgery, Zahid developed a passion for her work and became a lifelong advocate of women’s health rights. Once she started, as she put it, “there was no turning back because I enjoyed the work a lot.”

In 2002, Zahid was awarded a fellowship by the UW Evans School of Public Affairs. Supported by her family, she took a year away from Pakistan to study in the Population Leadership Program (PLP) at UW. The PLP is a program that brings together 12 professionals each year from all over the world to expand leadership skills and develop strategies to enhance the foundations of public health in populations.

After returning to Pakistan, she was offered a position by the World Population Foundation (WPF), an organization devoted to sexual and reproductive health and rights. She became the program manager for its new project focused on adolescent reproductive health and rights where she worked in the educational sector, training teachers about life skill programs. “It was quite an uphill battle,” said Zahid of trying to get the Pakistani Ministry of Education to introduce and implement life skill programs in schools.

While working for WPF, Zahid helped pretest the Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI), a tool designed to measure the effect of policies on women in order to ensure women’s rights. During her work with the HeRWAI, Zahid went back to UW for her master’s degree in public health. She focused her thesis on HeRWAI to analyze the Gender Reform Action Plan (GRAP), a newly introduced policy to improve the status of women in Pakistan.

Zahid now continues her work with HeRWAI, highlighting health rights of women. She has given presentations about HeRWAI in multiple countries and has trained others to use the tool.

Interview by Emily Lee