For Dr. Marvin Masalunga, the recognition must have been unexpected. The young doctor, after all, was simply immersed in his advocacy of looking after the people who need him most. It was precisely for that reason that he chose to live a life far from the city, far from the glamor and comfort of big hospitals in Manila, and serve as a deputy municipal health officer in Coron, Palawan.
It is exactly the same advocacy that the institution where he has taken up his postgraduate program, the Development Academy of the Philippines, has been trying to propagate through its partnership with the Department of Health and the latter’s Doctors to the Barrio (DTTB) Program.
This is why when Dr. Marvin became the first Southeast Asian doctor chosen to join the 120 Under 40 campaign for youth leaders who champion the cause of reproductive health around the world, the Academy felt proud that somebody who went through one of its programs was singled out and given that kind of recognition.
Recognizing family planning leaders
The program called “120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders” was launched in 2015 to recognize “the achievements of the next generation of family planning leaders worldwide.”
With his selection to the program, Dr. Marvin joins nine others in a series of talks at Maryland, Washington, and New York as part of the program by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Institute.
“It’s a validation of what I, and our group of rural health workers in Palawan, do for the people,” Marvin says of his selection. “Aside from that, it speaks that I am probably doing something right in my service.”
The 27-year-old doctor has just completed the DAP’s Master in Public Management major in Health Systems and Development (MPM-HSD) Program under the Academy’s Graduate School of Public and Development Management. He is a member of Batch 6 of the program that is set to graduate this coming October 21.
Two-year program
The program, which was started by the Academy in 2009, is a two-year, 38-unit interdisciplinary graduate program established to “increase the output and outcomes of the local health system while building the public management and health systems and development competencies.”
The program became a joint partnership between the DAP and the DOH once the latter recognized the need to provide DTTB participants with continuing medical education that would “enhance their skills for the effective performance of their tasks, roles and functions in their areas of assignment.”
Masalunga, a graduate of the highly-regarded medical school at University of the Philippines-Manila, entered the DTTB Program of the DOH after passing the medical board exam in 2014. He then subsequently enrolled with the MPM-HSD Program in October 2014.
Masalunga’s immersion in rural health work with specific interest in population management is admittedly a product of his special concern for the common people and their medical issues.
‘Close to my heart’
”In my involvement with the rural health community, I brought along with me three causes that are close to my heart – the disabled people, reproductive health, and mental health,” Dr. Marvin says. “These are the people who are at the laylayan (the outskirts of society). And they are the ones who need medical attention the most.”
Demonstrating this concern further is the action plan and program that he successfully defended to complete his MPM-HSD Program: “Management of Mental Health Conditions by Developing a Community-Based Action Program in Coron, Palawan.”
He now looks to helping improve maternal health and educating the youth on their reproductive health rights to lessen the cases of maternal mortality and teenage pregnancy in Coron and other rural areas. He also plans to take up pathology as specialization and later also create an adolescent forum to “empower the youth to know more about their reproductive health rights, and how they can take care of themselves better.”
Public voting
Dr. Marvin was actually nominated for inclusion in the 120 Under 40: The New Generation of Family Planning Leaders by the Forum for Family Planning and Development, a non-government organization concerned with population management. All 40 winners were chosen through public voting. Besides becoming part of a roster of 120 youth leaders when a group of 40 more youth leaders is chosen for each of 2017 and 2019, Masalunga will also receive a $1,000 cash prize.
Those rewards, however, are puny compared to the fulfillment that the young doctor feels every time he’s able to help the less privileged.
Indeed, it may not be a reach to say that Marvin is a whiff of fresh air among today’s ambitious, materially-driven young professionals, and this is why the DAP is proud. It is proud not only to have seen him honored, but also proud to have seen him pass through its halls, the same halls where many others passed through, honed their talent, and became a boon to their country and people. – Bert A. Ramirez