Elsie Karmbor-Ballah, a physician and a 2018 graduate of the Global Health and Social Medicine's masters of medical sciences in global health delivery (MMSc-GHD) program, has returned to her home in Liberia where she is putting her MMSc-GHD degree to its intended use. Before beginning her MMSc-GHD program at Harvard Medical School, Elsie Karmbor-Ballah, a Liberian physician, was deeply concerned about the maternal mortality rate in her country that had increased more than 50% between 2000 and 2013—in her country, childbirth was ending tragically for mothers.

During the first year of the two-year MMSc-GHD program, Karmbor-Ballah studied social medicine, management, and research methods. During her second year, she spent eight months in Liberia executing her mentored research project then returned to HMS to write and defend her thesis. Karmbor-Ballah was one of 48 graduates awarded an MMSc degree by the Program in Graduate Education, eleven of them with a global health delivery concentration.

Now that Karmbor-Ballah has graduated with her master's, she is back home in Liberia working to apply what she learned during her program and is implementing real change. “Improving transportation for health services, hiring and training more doctors and nurses, retraining traditional midwives as community health workers, and improving access to supplies would help save lives,” she said.

To read more about our graduates and more about the MMSc-GHD program, please click here to visit the website.