CONCURRENT DEGREE: THE POLICY CONNECTION - STEVEN NAKASHIMA
Steven Nakashima (MSPH, 1980) is the avian influenza project coordinator for the United Nations in Cameroon. He is working with the UN System and other international donors to coordinate their assistance to the Government of Cameroon after a recent outbreak of avian flu. Two other aspects of his job are to develop a wild and domestic bird surveillance program and to reinforce the capacity of the public health and livestock sectors for surveillance and control of avian flu outbreaks.
He moved to the West African country from Cairo, Egypt, where he directed a USAID sanitation project in a community of urban garbage collectors. He also prepared policy assessments for the UN on the status of Egypt's biodiversity, land, air, and water resources. "My UW environmental health degree set the foundation for me to provide policy and technical inputs in seven countries with topics that range from refugee relief, biodiversity conservation, tourism and coastal zone management, classic water and waste sanitation, municipal land use planning, health department administration, and communicable disease prevention and control," he says "Rather than creating a specialist, the EH degree made me a ‘versatilist’ (to quote the terminology of New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman), an ever increasingly important asset in our global community."
Nakashima and his wife, Sophie de Caen, both work for the United Nations. To meet the needs of his 9-yearold son, he has developed the first Little League baseball program in Cameroon. Teaching baseball has given him an incentive to broaden his French vocabulary—that and the desire to avoid the ridicule of his fluently bilingual son and daughter.