Dr. Meng-Yu checking some details on the logbook during the field visit in Cabanatuan, Philippines. Photo courtesy of Meng-Yu Chen.
One Physician Serving Across Borders
Dr. Meng-Yu Chen
Dr. Meng-Yu Chen heard a piece of advice early in her career that paved the way for everything she has done since: “Start working in your country. Learn about public health in your country. Then, you can contribute to global health.”
She worked as a pediatrician in her home country of Taiwan before serving as a medical officer for the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control. While there she did a 2-year fellowship in the U.S. with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), serving as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer, CDC’s globally recognized applied epidemiology training program.
It all came full circle after she returned to Taiwan and the pandemic hit in 2020.
SCROLL DOWN FOR FULL STORY
Together with Dr. Ryan Olos (in white shirt), the Subnational Consultant in the Philippines, , Dr. Meng-Yu Discussed the Community-Based Surveillance Transition and Continuity Plan with Partners from the Department of Health. Photo courtesy of Meng-Yu Chen.
“In the very beginning of the outbreak, I was involved in contact tracing COVID-19 cases,” said Dr. Chen. “Not just as a public health professional and physician, but as a global citizen, we all have a responsibility to safeguard public health. I appreciate the Taiwanese people who were willing to be interviewed and shared their exposure history and other details which helped us alert other countries. This helped us find a way to prevent the spread of the virus.”
At Taiwan CDC, Dr. Chen served as a supervisor at the Taiwan Field Epidemiology Training Program (FETP), which is supported by The Task Force for Global Health’s Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network (TEPHINET).
Later she took on another role, traveling to Manila in November 2021 as the Asia Regional Epidemiologist for The Task Force’s COVID-19 Vaccine Implementation Program (CoVIP). There she helped low- and middle-income countries build systems to deploy, use and evaluate COVID-19 vaccines.
Photo Caption: Together with Dr. Tony Mounts from The Task Force for Global Health and Dr. Arun Balajee from the Global Fund, Dr. Meng-Yu is discussing the implementation of Community Event-Based Surveillance with the Community Health Workers and Partners in Cabanatuan, Philippines. Photo courtesy of Meng-Yu Chen.
“We learned a lot from the COVID-19 pandemic. We really need the community to know how to detect the public health threats and how to protect themselves. In the Philippines, they have this established and regulated workforce of community health workers called the Barangay Health Workers. I remember the Barangay Health Emergency Response Team who supported contact tracing and brought resources to the community. Public health workers, especially during the pandemic, provided community support that the government could not handle by itself.”
She now works in the Philippines as the national lead for the Strengthening Outbreak Notification And Response (SONAR) program – an initiative of The Global Fund that is implemented by The Task Force – where she manages a team of six and partners with the Philippines Department of Health.
Field visit team posing in front of a Barangay Health Station in Cabanatuan City, Philippines with a Community Event-Based Surveillance Signals poster. (Dr. Meng-Yu is third from the left in the front row.) Photo courtesy of Meng-Yu Chen.
The SONAR project aims to build resilient health systems that can effectively identify and respond to emerging outbreaks through strengthened early warning disease surveillance, reporting and response systems. The Task Force for Global Health, in partnership with Africa CDC and the World Health Organization, implements the SONAR initiative in 14 partner countries.
“One key learning from my work with SONAR is the importance of integrating monitoring into the project from the very beginning,” said Dr. Chen. “As part of this, we developed a monitoring framework and tools in collaboration with the Department of Health as well as national and local consultations. Today, these tools are being used by the Department of Health to track the implementation of surveillance initiatives and identify areas for improvement. This has laid the groundwork for a more sustainable, country-owned monitoring system—something that can continue beyond the life of the SONAR initiative.”
The work she does now builds on everything that came before.
“I want to share what I learned from my previous public health experiences in my country, Taiwan, and share it with my Filipino colleagues,” said Dr. Chen. “You have to learn how to adapt to the local context. I think that type of knowledge-sharing is the value of global health work. It is not about which country’s public health approach is better. People just want to think about new ideas, different approaches.”
Dr. Chen hopes to inspire future generations to take action. She believes that even small efforts can create lasting change in public health. Whenever Dr. Chen goes back to visit Taiwan, she looks through her public health graduate school yearbook and smiles reading the note she predestined, “I hope my career will extend to the fields of public health and global health in the future.”
