After more than three years, Myrna Derksen leaves Health[e]Foundation. As project-manager she has been a valuable team member in the development and implementation of multiple courses for healthcare workers in Africa.
From day one she worked on the Health[e]Living course in Uganda. This course provides basic health, life skills and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) education for adolescents and young people. As an anthropologist Myrna was the perfect fit to relate these topics to community needs. Myrna integrated useful tools and added interactive elements to the course which turned out to be a big success. More than 200 community workers, educators, social workers and peer-educators were trained and now use the information and toolkit in their daily practice to reach and educate adolescents.
Moreover, Myrna developed the e-learning Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) together with AIDS Foundation East-West (AFEW) in preparation for the International AIDS conference in Amsterdam in 2018. The course motivates and trains community-based organizations and researchers to use new and relevant interventions to address public health concerns with the involvement of the community.
Myrna also played a huge role in the development of the MyHealth@Hand application where pregnant mothers and caregivers can easily keep track of their pregnancy and get in touch with each other via a mobile application.
We thank Myrna for her enthusiasm, for years of hard work and creative thoughts. We feel sad she is leaving us but she will forever remain part of the Health[e]Foundation family!
Good luck Myrna!