Shawn Khan

At the time of the QE Scholarship, Shawn was an undergraduate student in the Bachelor of Health Sciences program specializing in Global Health. After working at the ForumLab during the 2015-16 academic year, Shawn was introduced to the importance of evidence-informed decision-making in health systems policy. In order to understand health systems through a legal framework, Shawn interned at Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), a human rights law firm in Kenya.

As an outbound Queen Elizabeth Scholar, Shawn researched international best practice standards of documenting human rights violations to help train legal response providers in collecting evidence to a standard that can be used in court. LAW was also establishing a Civilian Oversight Board in Somalia to determine which violations are being experienced by people on the ground and how they would like the Civilian Oversight Board to respond to these violations. Shawn explored the best way to design the focus groups, and the types of questions that needed to be asked to produce the best results. Finally, he drafted a comprehensive report on female genital mutilation to inform best practice guidelines. In doing so, Shawn hoped to gain an appreciation for the framework of setting clear agendas, developing a policy, and implementing a structure that allows for a dynamic community of health actors to respond to human right injustices.