Saranya Sachdev has just completed her final semester in a Master of Health Communication at the University of Sydney as an Australian Award Scholar. Although she has a background in vaccine and health policy research, she transitioned into health communication due to her goal of translating health research for equitable and culturally-sensitive access to information by all. This internship marked Saranya’s first industry experience in health communication.
During her time as an intern at WHO CC UTS, Saranya wrote and copy-edited numerous media releases, news, reports, and briefs on the activities conducted by the Centre. One such brief was for the Pacific Leadership Program 2024 that participants got to take back with them upon their return. Additionally, during the Program she assisted with coordination and media generation. She was the photographer during WHO Chief Nursing Officer Dr Amelia Latu Afuhaamango Tuipulotu’s visit to the Program, and she helped facilitate the video interviews conducted with Dr Amelia and the Program fellows.
Saranya also had responsibilities in managing the Centre’s social media and website. She contributed news updates to the Centre’s website about nursing education milestones in the Pacific, the Centre’s DFAT funding for the Partnership for a Healthy Region initiative, and more. As the Centre is the Secretariat for the Global Network of WHO CCs for Nursing and Midwifery, Saranya also got to manage the Network’s website and the online WHO Community of Practice Network group, updating the Network’s annual schedule and collection of resources such as the LINKS Magazine articles, useful for all 43 Collaborating Centres in the network. On X (formerly Twitter), she helped manage both the Centre and the Network’s accounts, tweeting in support of the Pandemic Accord, making the LINKS articles more accessible, and on important events such as the Global Partner’s Meeting and the 77th World Health Assembly.
Additionally, Saranya provided assistance to the Centre’s projects and programs in the form of transcribing focus group discussions for qualitative analysis and feedback from program participants for organization, learnings, and media use. She helped generate templates for easy use in future reports and assisted fellow interns and volunteers in their tasks.
Saranya built her skills and capacity in many ways during her internship, such as receiving training on using WordPress. She enjoyed the opportunity to work in communications for a in impactful global health centre, and is looking forward to using the experiences she has gained in her future endeavors.