Chuka Anude, MPH 2007

I have always wanted to be a hand and a voice; a hand to help hurting people and a voice for the voiceless. This led me to medicine and now to public health. As soon as I became a doctor, I realized that clinical medicine had its limitations at a population level. My experiences practicing medicine in Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana and Guyana enabled me to see that disease prevention, health promotion and public health can help seek out population based solutions to provide answers to turn back the tide of the epidemic of HIV and other infectious disease plaguing Africa and parts of the Caribbean. It was then that I decided to devote my life and career to public health especially in the area of HIV and other infectious diseases.

My dream is to provide visionary global public health leadership in HIV/AIDS by mobilising governments and international organisations to increase financial and technical support for a multi-sectoral comprehensive and sustainable prevention and treatment response to HIV/AIDS tailored to local needs and health systems in the worst affected countries.

I want to be a leader in translational research and the application of epidemiological evidence in the design, modelling, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of effective HIV/AIDS programs in resource limited settings.

But I needed to get an MPH and I decided on Johns Hopkins even though I was accepted at another MPH program with scholarship support. Johns Hopkins is the largest, oldest and number 1 school of public health in the world and I had met many Hopkins graduates in the field who were excellent public health leaders. In addition, the depth of faculty expertise, the faculty-student interaction, the diversity and international reputation, the networking opportunity and the proximity to Washington all helped me make the choice. To cap my dream choice, Johns Hopkins awarded me the Hopkins Alfred Sommer Scholarship as the first African for the MPH program

After my MPH, I decided to go ahead and get a doctorate degree in order to sharpen my technical and leadership skills at a higher level as well as develop expertise in high level applied epidemiology skills so as to help translate research findings to effective global health programs and policies. Moving from the MPH to the doctoral program was one of the best decisions I made. I would not exchange my Hopkins experience with anything else. All my expectations have been met.