Professional Identity Reflections as Procrastination (The Art of Navel Gazing)

I have been mulling over how to approach writing a "professional" blog during my time in Uganda for quite a while now. Part of the reason for the delay my long-held professional identity that leans away from traditional, more biomedical approaches to "public health". 

This has been the case for much of my nearly 25-year career (What??? How can it be that long?). 

My first professional experience post-MPH was working in Uganda on health in the context of international development. Then, I eventually landed on an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. program as opposed to public health. However, as I have had the great privilege of engaging in interdisciplinary research with a political scientist and IR expert over the past decade, my focus on delving more deeply into the social, cultural, and political aspects affecting public health has sharpened substantially. Additionally, as I have honed love, commitment to, and experience with community-centered, qualitative research that I see as critical for improving current public health approaches, I have experienced rather alarming negative reactions to qualitative research within my public health circles. This ranges from limited understanding to outright bias and disdain, leaving me disoriented at times when considering my place as a public health professional. My return to Uganda, combined with the opportunity to think and reflect on such things afforded by academic sabbatical, has crystallized my ongoing discomfort with and critiques of the highly medicalized and problem/deficit centered default approaches of public health. 

Elements of this are likely inherent in my evolution to an overarching professional identity as an academic. However, I am not yet sure how my expanding scholarly path beyond public health conferences, journals, and other public health disciplinary forums means.  How my career will evolve accordingly is still cloudy and out of focus. But again, sabbatical offers an amazing opportunity to ponder such things and dream of future possibilities (yes, this is an amazing benefit in the academic profession, though increasingly being eliminated across U.S. universities AND also one that is needed, earned, and important for the positive, ripple effect on students, colleagues, and the institution).

In any case, all of this to share why I have been procrastinating on my "professional" blog posts. I definitely have ideas including introducing you to "the public" in Uganda as well as ongoing observations of the Ebola outbreak. Those will be forthcoming once I finish indulging in the slower pace of life in Uganda, life on sabbatical, and accompanying introspection-some *may call it navel gazing ☺. With the potential of at least 20 more years of my career ahead of me, I prefer to embrace it as a critical reflection process to help me carve out a couple more meaningful, inspirational, impactful, and even joyful decades.