FICTION
Fiction allows me to facilitate dialogue on important public health issues such as immunization, pandemic preparedness, and responsible healthy technology use. These conversations take place alongside the struggles and competing priorities that girls and people of color throughout the world face. I believe the greatest support we can give to young boys and girls are opportunities, options, and choices to build a more equitable future. My writing strives to use story to create compelling characters that they can learn from, cheer on, and aspire toward.
The Antidotes: Pollution Solution
Patty wrote The Antidotes: Pollution Solution with her 10-year-old son, Gabriel, noting how he not only inspired the characters and the story’s development, but also her as a mother.
“Children needed to return to normalcy from the pandemic,” says Dr. Mechael. “It is tricky to discuss challenging topics with children in age-friendly ways, but it is so important. It would be beneficial for kids to read the book in collaboration with school science programs as well as with their parents. I want to inspire and empower a whole new generation to understand public health, technology, and the environment – and what they can do today and hopefully as the world’s future leaders.”
Viral
Marina Gobrial, a vaccine scientist, is called back from her honeymoon during the first polio outbreak in over 50 years in the United States.
The President of the United States appoints Marina, to lead a special Task Force to slow the spread, treat the sick, and protect the public. Marina and her network of women in science race against time and the bio-terrorist group, AVAX, to keep the world from setting the clock back to the 1950s.
The anti-vaxxer movement and the unchecked epidemic of Fake News has a generation of privileged American parents, who never saw a case of polio, convinced that vaccines cause autism, are toxic, and a Big Pharma money-making hoax. Opportunities to opt out of immunizing children drops the national immunization coverage levels to 70% from the 90-95% needed to keep the population protected from an epidemic. Decades of public health advancements in the Unites States are at risk, destabilizing the rest of the world.
Viral examines the tug of war between individual choices and responsibility to society and the dangers of American exceptionalism in a globalized world.
NON-FICTION
I have written extensively in my professional and academic publications on public health. I co-edited the book mHealth in Practice. My work has appeared in The Huffington Post and is well represented in renowned health journals and text books. I am a regular contributor to AIMed, writing about responsible AI practices and global health to reduce the amplification of sexism and racism through technology.
mHealth in Practice
There has recently been an explosion of interest around the application of mobile communication technologies to support health initiatives in developing countries (mHealth). As a result, there is a need to promote and share rigorous research for better informed policy, programming, and investment. There are, however, few platforms for the exchange of information and proven practice between practitioners and researchers.
The subtopic of prevention, well-being, and health promotion within mHealth is particularly ripe for deeper exploration. While many reports tout the potential of mobiles to influence behaviour change for health, there is limited knowledge about what works (and what does not work), and about how to evaluate current and future programs. This is a focused edited volume with contributions from leading researchers and practitioners to identify best practices in using mobile technologies to promote healthy behaviours (and reduce unhealthy ones) in resource-constrained settings with a special focus on developing countries.
This topic is inherently interdisciplinary. Though the opportunities to leverage mobile phones for health are new, the challenges confronting researchers and practitioners are well-established and theoretically complex, with roots in decades of work on mediated behaviour change campaigns and theories.
SELECTED BLOGS
SELECTED ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
Digital health for real-time monitoring of a national immunisation campaign in Indonesia: a large-scale effectiveness evaluation. BMJ Open.
Effects of an mHealth voice message service (mMitra) on maternal health knowledge and practices of low-income women in India: findings from a pseudo-randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health.
The Impact of an mHealth Voice Message Service (mMitra) on Infant Care Knowledge, and Practices Among Low-Income Women in India: Findings from a Pseudo-Randomized Controlled Trial. Maternal and Child Health Journal.
The Elusive Path Toward Measuring Health Outcomes: Lessons Learned from a Pseudo-Randomized Control Trial of a Large-scale Mobile Health Initiative. JMIR mHealth and uHealth.
Digital self care must be approached by the health sector with eyes wide open. BMJ Opinion.
What is Personal Connected Health: An Ecosystem’s Perspective Defining Personal Connected Health. Personal Connected Health Alliance.
Addressing Gender and Women’s Empowerment In mHealth for MNCH: An Analytical Framework. mHealth Alliance.
Capitalizing on the Characteristics of mHealth to Evaluate Its Impact. Journal of Health Communication.
Empowering Women through Mobile Technology – We Need to do More. Consilience: The Journal of International Development (Columbia University).
Barriers and gaps affecting mHealth in low and middle-income countries: Policy white paper. Earth Institute (Columbia University).
Opportunities and Challenges of Integrating mHealth Applications into Rural Health Initiatives in Africa. Chapter in Handbook of Research on Developments in E-Health and Telemedicine: Technological and Social Perspectives. IGI Global.
The Case for mHealth in Developing Countries. Mobilizing Markets: Special Edition of MIT Innovations Journal for the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009. MIT Press.
The Ethics of Telemedicine in Africa: The Millennium Villages Project Experience. Conference Paper: Mobile Communication and the Ethics of Social Networking Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Mobile Phones and Healthcare: An Egyptian Case in Handbook of Mobile Communication Studies (J. Katz, ed.). MIT Press.