Episode 10-Interview with Dr. Chido Dziva Chikwari

In this episode we hear from  Dr. Chido Dziva Chikwari, an Epidemiologist from Zimbabwe about her work and career journey in public health for the past 9 years. 

We talked about:

• Chido’s current roles and how long she has been doing health research work 
• Chido’s background and career journey and how she ended up doing the work she does now
• How she ended up doing an Master’s degree in Epidemiology and what influenced her choices 
• The importance of career guidance and the right vocabulary in career decision making 
• What is an epidemiologist and what do they do?- With examples 
• The things she likes about working in Epidemiology and research 
• How she has used her skills to pivot to different program areas over the years 
• Her research project on increasing access and uptake of HIV testing for children in Zimbabwe that she conducted as part of her PhD 
• How the findings from her research work became relevant when COVID-19 broke out  in 2019 
• How we are going to make a movie on Chido’s Doctoral research 
• What are Chido’s top favorite reasons she likes about working in public health research 
• The value and importance of having a good community of people to work with 
• What public health means to Chido 
• For the good of everybody
• What good for everyone includes and entails from access, universal health coverage, priority populations, COVID-19 global response 
• The importance of meeting people where they are in public health interventions eg. COVID-19 vaccines and prevention 
• Chido’s advice to young people and all people of all ages on career paths 
• What Chido knows now about the field of public health that wishes she had known or understood earlier
• Public Health is a lot of work?
• Where is the money in Public health? Is there money in public health work?
• Career advice and tips are relevant throughout the lifecourse 
• Things change, career pivots happen, life happens
• Check out  https://www.thruzim.org/  for all the research work