Why Generic Portfolios Don’t Work in Global Health
Most beginner portfolios show:
- Sales dashboards
- Generic e-commerce datasets
- Kaggle competitions with no context
Health & development recruiters want to see:
- Impact metrics
- Facility or patient flows
- Equity and access questions
5 Portfolio Projects That Translate
- Immunization Coverage Dashboard
- By district, facility, age group
- Includes data quality flags
- Maternal Health Outcomes Analysis
- ANC visits, delivery outcomes, post-natal follow-up
- Trends and disparities by geography
- Financial Protection Study
- Out-of-pocket health expenditures
- Catastrophic spending and coping mechanisms
- Facility Readiness Scorecard
- Essential services, equipment, staffing
- Simple composite index + ranking
- Survey Data Quality Report
- Non-response, inconsistent answers, timing patterns
How to Make Each Project Recruiter-Friendly
- Provide:
- Short context (what problem are we solving?)
- Plain-language summary of findings
- 3–5 clear visuals
- Highlight:
- Data limitations
- How you would improve the study if you had more resources
By using health & development contexts, you show that you can think beyond numbers and connect to real-world impact.