Profile
From clinical care to public health home and abroad
After graduating as a medical doctor in 2000, I gained clinical experience in different fields, including internal medicine, surgery, gynecology & obstetrics, primary care and (acute) psychiatry. In 2003, I finished my training in tropical medicine at the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam. As a tropical doctor, I have been on several field missions with Medecins du Monde, Medecins Sans Frontieres and on local contract. Most projects in the field were not purely clinical, but also contained an important amount of public health related tasks, including surveillance, outbreak management, health promotion etc. Through this experience, my interest slowly shifted from clinical work to public health. Presently I still work as a (part-time) general practitioner in Amsterdam, but with a special interest in public health.
Health care policy and advise
In 2008, I started working for STI AIDS Netherlands, a Dutch national organization for STI and HIV control. Part of my responsibilities were policy development and advice, developing projects, guidelines as well as training programs for health care professionals. In 2012, I finished the Master of International Health. This Master helped me to further strengthen my skills in health system research, policy development and policy advise and further triggered my interest in this field. Digging into a topic, make in-depth analysis, draw conclusions, and do recommendations has since then become the content of most assignments as a public health consultant (see portfolio).
Countries that I have worked in include Ghana, Surinam, Sierra Leone, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Congo DRC, Congo Brazzaville, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and the Netherlands Antilles. Presently, I am based in the Netherlands.