John Ebong, one of the young people leading change in Nigerian communities through healthcare, tells Impacty in this interview about himself, his background and what leading Health Compass is like.
Can we meet John?
John Ebong is my name. I am a citizen Journalist, on-air-personality, writer and final year medical student. I have particular interest in public health advocacy and volunteer with several organizations who are passionate about same. I enjoy team work and I love working in a diverse setting.
What was growing up like?
I was born and brought up in the ancient city of Kano State, the centre of civilization in Northern Nigeria in my opinion. Mine was a small nuclear Christian conservative family and I had 3 siblings. Being the second child in a middle class home, I grew up to accept responsibilities early enough and my background ensured that morals were instilled in me early enough. I was particularly inspired by my mum whom I saw as a role model for a long time. She combined her career as an accountant with managing her home. I learnt she was a masters student at the time she was pregnant with my elder brother. As secondary school students then, she read alongside us while preparing for her exams to qualify as a chartered accountant. A full time career lady she was and despite the challenges it came with, she managed to keep the home front. We never suffered neglect or lacked her attention and she was very instrumental in meeting many of our needs. Growing up also had its own twists and turns as our religious and ethnic identity differed from that of most people around us. Also, Kano State became the hotbed for violent extremism, religious and political conflicts. Subsequently, we learnt how to coexist in society amidst diversity in values and conflicting opinions.
What is your biggest motivation?
While growing up, my family faced a lot of difficulties financially. At a time, both of my parents were unemployed for a prolonged period and we experienced extreme lack. Basic necessities such as new clothes and quality healthcare became a luxury. With time, we were able to struggle to make ends meet and later, things began to pick up. Unfortunately, many families within Nigeria live below the poverty line and several individuals have been recipients of unimaginable hardship and danger. In my line of duty as a volunteer, I have encountered many who have died from preventable causes due to inability to access quality healthcare. Thus, I am burdened by the increasing number of preventable deaths in low income families, I am burdened by the inability of many to access quality health services and thus motivated to do all within my power to see to it that preventable deaths are reduced.
Working with health related organizations has been fulfilling and worthwhile. I encourage anyone interested in social work never to hesitate getting involved, in it lies fulfillment.
Why did you start Health Compass?
At the beginning of my 4th Year in Medical School, I and my colleagues were exposed to clinical practice and within few weeks, I had encountered a handful of patients who presented to the hospital with terminal illnesses. Unfortunately, most presented at the late stages of their illnesses which meant worse outcomes and in some cases led to morbidity and preventable deaths. I also discovered that a major cause of this delay between presentation of symptoms and visit to the hospital was due to ignorance occasioned by insufficient community health education and community based sensitization efforts. After brainstorming with some of my colleagues and teachers on how best to bring the hospital to the community, I began efforts that finally yielded what is today known as Health Compass Initiative. We are a hub of young doctors and students passionate about combating non communicable diseases through community health education and provision of free screening services.
What can you say has been your biggest challenge in running Health Compass?
One major challenge we face as an organization is the paucity of funds needed to undertake health campaigns and many of our community based activities. Not many sponsors identify with the enormous work we do for society and not many bodies financially commit to the advancement of our work. Despite accounting for the greatest amount of deaths worldwide, Non Communicable Diseases (NCDs) still is not accorded the relevance it deserves in the healthcare space. Thus, since this is the core focus area of our organization, funding for our work has been grossly inadequate.
What are your major wins?
As an organization, our biggest win is preventing unwarranted deaths from NCDs and making our community live healthy. However, one of the specific recognition we count as an achievement came in 2019. For our efforts, we were recognized by the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations (IFMSA) as one of the top 10 medical students’ led initiatives from across the globe. This motivated us with some level of drive to understand that though we act locally, we needed to begin thinking globally.
What leadership strategy has helped you in leading the Health Compass team?
One of my greatest desires as the leader of a dynamic team is carrying everyone along. Team building efforts in my opinion must give everyone a sense of belonging. The strategy I employed to do this was creating subgroups or cells of smaller members of the team. Each subgroup became an arm of the team and had its lead. Subsequently, all members of the executive board including myself had to be members of an arm headed by a member of the team. This meant that although I was President, I had to belong to an arm of health compass where I submitted to the leadership of a member of the team. This action proved crucial. It gave space for team members to develop their leadership skills, dynamism, confidence and capacity. With time, proficiency of each member of the team was optimized and efficiency greatly increased. Leading this team helped me realize practical ways of capacity building through encouraging the led to take up responsibilities.
What excites you the most about the work going on at Health Compass?
For me, the impact of any initiative should be the biggest motivation of those championing such initiative. The local work we do has been able to gain increased visibility and credence in such a short period largely due to the dedication of members of the team. This is important to our work as a large part of our activities lies in community health education. Therefore, with continuous hard work and dedication, our impact would be far-reaching.
Where do you see Health Compass in the next 5 years?
As a team, we hope to be the leading organization in Nigeria with regard to prevention of NCDs. It is our desire to keep growing and expanding our work to reach a level where we can collaborate with donor partners and international bodies to prevent NCDs locally. With the weight of grassroot work we do, we have built efficiency, hands-on experience and a huge amount of exposure working with local communities. We would surely be a choice partner for donor agencies and well meaning individuals who would want to reach out to communities as regards prevention of NCDs.
Would you encourage any one to toe the path you have chosen with social work? And why?
Anyone who wishes to toe this path has made a noble choice. Service to humanity is the greatest form of service and the rewards are far-reaching. Personally, I found my passion while volunteering with an organization. While there, I got inspired by the enormous amount of work done by individuals to improve the livelihood of communities. Fortunately, this went on to influence the choice of my career and line of work. Working with health related organizations has been fulfilling and worthwhile. I encourage anyone interested in social work never to hesitate getting involved, in it lies fulfillment.
Any final words?
Thank you for having me. Kudos to you for the work you do at Impacty. I look forward to future collaborations.
You may reach John at e.e.johnn@gmail.com
Health Compass Twitter: @healthcompassng
