Name: Neha Deshpande
Year: Class of 2011
Hometown: Monmouth Junction, NJ
Major: Molecular and Cellular Biology, minor in French Cultural Studies
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From October 4-7, 2009, over 350 delegates from 28 countries gathered in New Delhi, India for the 4th International Birth Defects and Disabilities Conference in the Developing World. Conference delegates included leaders from The March of Dimes Foundation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and The National Institute of Health, to name a few. Delegates ranged from health professionals, policy makers, social workers, patients, administrators, and volunteers – the youngest of whom was me!
My name is Neha Deshpande and I am currently a junior, Molecular & Cellular Biology major at Hopkins. I am involved in many activities on campus including research at the medical campus, dancing with my team JHU JOSH, working as a JHU Admissions Representative, leading the JHU Women’s Pre-Health Leadership Society, and teaching French to a 3rd grade class at a local Baltimore public school. However, by far my biggest commitment is to mothers and babies across the world. After 9 years of volunteering with the March of Dimes (MOD), the nation’s pioneer in maternal and infant health, I am the 2009-2010 March of Dimes National Youth Chair. I represent over 1 million youth volunteers across the nation who are working towards a day when every baby is born healthy.
As the Chair of the MOD National Youth Council, I assist the organization in the design and implementation of various youth leadership programs such as health initiatives to promote healthy lifestyle choices among teens and young adults, advocacy initiatives to push for newborn screening and maternal and infant health insurance, communication via the national “Youth Times” newsletter, and education programs such as fall and summer volunteer leadership conferences. Currently, I am working with March of Dimes Global Programs to establish an international network of youth volunteers. The goal of this network is to emphasize collective action to improve birth outcomes and help reduce mortality and disability for birth defects and preterm births worldwide. The network would include youth from six academic centers including China, Lebanon, The Philippines, Brazil, Egypt, and the United States.
My goal at the 4th International conference was not only to represent March of Dimes Team Youth, but to relay the importance of “The Power of Youth in Global Public Health.” My presentation offered strategies for mobilizing young professionals in developing countries to help reduce the rates of death and disability from preterm birth and birth defects in local communities. I shared my experiences working with March of Dimes Team Youth, a long-standing and successful model for engaging and sustaining volunteer activity in areas of community service, advocacy, education, and fundraising. Did you know that more than 1 in every 4 persons in the world is a youth aged 10-24 years? (Population Reference Bureau, February 2006). Nearly 70% of the world’s young people live in developing countries, which means that youth represent an untapped resource with the time, incentive, and energy to volunteer in ways that can help solve social, economic, and health challenges.
The 4th International Conference was a spectacular opportunity that really showed me that the work we do as volunteers has both national and global impact. Every year, an estimated 7.8 million children are born in the world with a serious genetic or acquired birth defect. Of these children who are born, 3.3 million die each year. The impact of birth defects is particularly severe in developing countries where 95% of deaths of children occur who have serious birth defects. Tragically, every year nearly 13 million babies are born prematurely worldwide, and one million of these babies die. The March of Dimes Global Programs is working hard to combat these disturbing statistics. To understand more about the March of Dimes’ mission on a global scale, check out the recently published White Paper on Preterm Birth (a pdf version).
A trip to India would not be complete without some sightseeing! I was fortunate to have my mother accompany me as my guest and we spent a few days after the conference visiting the Taj Mahal as well as family members in Mumbai, India.
November is also National Prematurity Awareness Month so I encourage all of you to show your support for moms and babies worldwide! Visit our website and sign up for our E-newsletter, do something nice for a local Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, or Create your virtual band to celebrate, honor, or remember a baby in your life. We have also developed an incredible volunteer toolkit that you should check out if you are interested in more ways to get involved with the March of Dimes.
I would like to thank The Johns Hopkins Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program for sponsoring my trip to India. Without this amazing fellowship program, I would not have had this extraordinary life-changing experience serving as a delegate at an international conference!
**Editor's note: Be sure to check out Neha's previous guest blog entry, "Intersession in India."**
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