Yale Medical and Public Health Fellows Report On Health Problems Across the Globe

Yale medical and public health students who, during the past summer have studied everything from unexplained deaths in Brazil to female condoms in Kenya, will report their research findings and give descriptions of their overseas study sites on Wednesday, October 20, from 4-6 p.m.

Three of the 13 Downs International Health Travel Fellows will make oral presentations from 5-6 p.m. at the Committee on International Health Annual Fall Symposium and Poster Session in the Jane Ellen Hope Building. The remaining students will present posters of their projects and will be available for questions and comments from 4-5 p.m.

“They all return with so much more maturity,” said Dr. Curtis Patton, professor of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, as well as director of International Medical Studies. “When they travel abroad to carry out their research projects, they have to be innovative. They have to be versatile. The hood of a jeep might have to become a lab bench.”

Each year some 12 to 15 medical, nursing, and public health graduate students travel to distant places for two or more months to study a variety of biomedical and public health problems. Applications for the Downs International Health Student Travel Fellowships are made to the Committee on International Health at the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Petrie Rainey, professor of Laboratory Medicine and chairman of the Symposium Subcommittee, said the three Downs Fellows who will give brief oral presentations are Vivek Murthy, a medical student who studied iron deficiency anemia among adolescents in rural south India; Erik Hett, a candidate for a master’s in Public Health who traveled to Kenya to investigate the effect of Wolbachia infection on age in Tsetse; and Mary-Ann Etiebet, a medical student who looked into the acceptability in South Africa of interventions to reduce HIV transmission between mother and child.

The other students and their projects are: Mark Davis, a medical student who studied unexplained deaths in Brazil; Shilpa Sayana, a public health student who investigated men’s involvement in reproductive health in Egypt; Melissa Pelton, a student in the physician’s assistant program who conducted a primary survey of elbow fractures in Haiti; Alison Norris, an M.D./PhD candidate who studied distribution of female condoms in Kenya; Margaret Bourdeaux, a medical student who studied the impact of a sanitary waste disposal system on child malnutrition in Kosovo; Jacob Creswell, a public health student who studied the impact of HIV/AIDS intervention on Mexican physicians; Laura Krech, a public health student who studied the status of women’s health in Mexico City; Pamela Matson, a public health graduate student who investigated the behavioral risk factors associated with co-infection with HIV and the hepatitis C virus in St. Petersburg, Russia; Douglas Newton, a public health student who studied the prevalence of tuberculosis in Russia among adults with HIV who smoke; and Hilary Rosen, a public health student who investigated the risk for Hantavirus infection in Thailand.

The Jane Ellen Hope Building is at 315 Cedar St. in New Haven. The poster presentations will take place in the Hope lobby and first floor corridors and the talks will be given in Room 110.