HPH NOW checked in with three of this year’s interns:

Katrina Abuabara
Summer Minority Program: Summer Research Internships in Public Health

The internship is a 10-week research program for students from an underrepresented minority group who are interested in community-based research. This year’s program runs from June 4 to August 3.

As a human biology major at Stanford University last year, Katrina Abuabara, 22, was bombarded with materials from medical schools across the country. However, she found that she was more interested in studying diseases of populations. Now, as an intern in the Department of Health and Social Behavior, Abuabara is researching social inequities in health.

Abuabara is working with Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, assistant professor in the Department of Health and Social Behavior, investigating some of the possible health effects of the welfare reform act passed in 1996. The act put more stringent limits on the length of time people can remain on welfare and radically changed the benefits available to immigrants and their families.

Under the guidance of Acevedo-Garcia, Abuabara is helping to conduct a cross-sectional study of birth outcomes for immigrants and non-immigrants in all 50 states, comparing statistics on infant mortality and low-birth weight before and after passage of the act.

They are also studying the effects of acculturation on birth outcomes. Hispanics as a group, for example, have about one-half the low-birth-weight rate of African Americans, said Abuabara, despite the fact that the groups share a similar socioeconomic status.

There are also striking differences in birth weights among Hispanics. People of Cuban and Mexican descent appear to be particularly affected by acculturation, with birth weights in their communities decreasing with each new generation born in the United States.

"Dr. Acevedo-Garcia is trying to figure out why that is. Is it something about the sense of community or their diets? We just don’t know yet," said Abuabara.

Abuabara said she was drawn towards the HSPH internship to learn more about the subspecialties in public health.

"Every one here has been very accessible and willing to meet with me, and that has been useful for someone considering a career in public health," she said.

Abuabara will be returning to Stanford in the fall. As part of a special program at Stanford, she will receive a master’s degree in sociology, along with her bachelor’s degree, this December.

Oyinade Aderibigbe
Summer Minority Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP)

The internship is a six-week program for high school students interested in the health sciences and related research. The program runs from June 26 to August 24.

Oyinade Aderibigbe, 16, from Melrose, Massachusetts, knows a thing or two about being a teenager–something the staff members at the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention hopes will help them spread the word about cancer prevention among teens.

As an intern at the center, Aderibigbe is writing two articles about cancer and teens for BET.com, a web site that tailors its content to African Americans and people living in urban areas.

"Because I am an adolescent, I have a perspective that adults may not have about the choices teens make and risks they face," said Aderibigbe.

Adolescents are a low-risk group for most types of cancer, and, explained Aderibigbe, she hopes to keep them that way. In one of her articles, Aderibigbe will focus on prevention strategies, such as exercise, that can help protect against the development of certain types of cancers later in life. Another article will address skin cancer prevention among African Americans. Even if teens themselves do not visit the web site, Aderibigbe hopes the article will inform their parents about prevention strategies they can share with their children.

Aderibigbe is also assisting Michelle Samplin-Salgado, communications manager at the center, and Morgan Ford, a student in the Department of Health and Social Behavior, organize focus groups to look at teens’ attitudes about cancer risk and prevention. The center wants to develop a campaign of its own about cancer prevention, and feedback from the focus groups will help Samplin-Salgado and Ford identify elements of a successful campaign.

Aderibigbe said she eventually wants to be a pediatrician because she likes both the clinical aspects of medicine and the fun of working with children.

"I thought combining the two interests would be good," she said.

She said the internship at HSPH will deepen her knowledge of health as a whole, while broadening her exposure to fields beyond medicine. She already is involved in public health, volunteering for an organization that educates teens about dating violence.

"It’s sad to see how many people are in bad situations, and they don’t know how to get out of them," said Aderibigbe.

Aderibigbe will be entering her junior year at Melrose High in Melrose, Massachusetts this fall.

Babacar Cisse
Division of Biological Sciences Undergraduate Summer Internship Program for Minority Students

The internship is a 10-week, laboratory-based research program for minority undergraduates during the summer following their sophomore or junior years. The program runs from June 11 to August 17.

A resident of New York and now a US citizen, Babacar Cisse, 27, originally came from Senegal, where malaria is rampant. There, he watched friends die from the disease and was infected himself. At HSPH, he is studying the transmission of malaria in the lab of Ali Sultan, assistant professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. He hopes his work will contribute to a vaccine.

"Malaria is a disease of the poor world," said Cisse. "It is a nasty disease that gets a tiny fraction of attention or money when compared to other infectious diseases such as AIDS and cancer."

Malaria kills more than one million people every year, and more than 300 million new cases are expected worldwide in 2001. The majority of those infections will be in Africa, where 90 percent of all malaria-related deaths this year are expected to occur.

In humans, four parasites cause malaria, which are passed along by bites of mosquitoes.

The parasites have become increasingly resistant to common treatments, making the creation of new drug therapies and vaccines urgent.

In Sultan’s lab, Cisse is studying the sexual differentiation of the malaria parasites. Mosquitoes will transmit the parasites during any stage of the parasites’ sexual development, but P. falciparum, the deadliest parasite, is infectious during its gametocyte stage, or just before the parasites have matured into gametes ready for fertilization. Cisse is assisting researchers in the lab who are trying to identify the genes responsible for triggering the parasites’ switch from asexual to sexual stages. They hope to interfere with the parasites’ development at the genetic level to block their transmission from mosquitoes to humans.

"Should this work, I know it’s going to help a lot of people," said Cisse. "This work is about making something useful and practical. For me, the main thing is to make sure that the people in the Third World who are suffering from malaria get help."

This fall, Cisse will be a junior majoring in biochemistry at Bard College in New York. He said when he first entered college, he thought he would be involved in bioengineering, but now, he said, "I know that infectious diseases will be a big part of my life because they don’t receive the attention they deserve, and the science is very fascinating."

Cisse is considering studying at Harvard for a semester before returning to Bard.