My professional identity

Having a social media identity is inevitable in this era, as a public health researcher, a professional identity is highly important. As an aspiring professor, I aim for social media presence of a professional identity, as a pioneer of public health amongst immigrant communities in North America.

I hope to use all major social media platforms to reach as many stakeholders as possible, such as Twitter to communicate to majority of North Americans. Linkedin to connect and collaborate with professionals from same industry. Instagram to reach younger audience and Facebook to reach more mature audience.

Cardiovascular diseases, diabetes II and cancer, which are all unproportionally higher amongst immigrants groups, most notably amongst South Asian in North America (Sebastian S A., 2022).

My professional identity includes educating health workers regarding cultural sensitivity and competency training when facing patients from minority groups, as there is a lack of cultural competency training amongst workforce in North America,

I aim to have a professional identity where I can also easily assimilate knowledge, values and awareness regarding health that will grant immigrants accessibility to health.

I want to have a professional identity where general public can impose confidence and trust, and possibly motivate them to invoke health lifestyle changes to minimize risks and severity of diseases in their later stages of life.

My professional value is to advocate health equity amongst population, whereas anyone has access to basic health services and healthy behaviour information, especially in vulernable population. The two most important professional values are transparency and creditability, because these are two values that will build trust between me and stakeholders, where I can generate evidences and invoke changes amongst stakeholders.

Within the global health system, there are two roles I can fit within the system.

First, a professional identity that can be a part of training health workers on cultural-competency programs, to illustrate basic methods on breaking language barrier with a patient, yet acquire important clinical information from patient.

Second, an identity where newly arrived immigrants, such as South Asian groups in North America, where they can absorb basic health awareness and knowledge to prevent certain behaviour that would turn risk factors into diseases.

Reference

Sebastian S A, Avanthika C, Jhaveri S, et al. (February 16, 2022) The Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Immigrants in Canada. Cureus 14(2): e22300. doi:10.7759/cureus.22300

Tu JV, Chu A, Rezai MR, et al.: The incidence of major cardiovascular events in immigrants to Ontario, Canada: the CANHEART immigrant study. Circulation. 2015, 132:1549-1559. 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.115.015345

Rana A, de Souza RJ, Kandasamy S, Lear SA, Anand SS: Cardiovascular risk among South Asians living in Canada: a systematic review and meta-analysis. CMAJ Open. 2014, 2:E183-91. 10.9778/cmajo.20130064

Newer Canadian immigrants have fewer heart health risks. (2011). Accessed: January 17, 2022: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newer-canadian-immigrants-have-fewer-heart-health-risks-1.1105676.