2019 Fellows

 Dina’s project aims to 1) document the prevalence of diabetes among Venezuelan refugees seeking care in Trinidad, 2) understand current diabetes management practices among these patients and barriers to care, 3) understand current dietary practices including food security and barriers to accessing healthy foods.

Dina is a second year student in the Global Health and Population department within the Population Health Sciences PhD program. Dina’s research interests include the epidemiology of non-communicable diseases with a focus on the interactions between dietary and environmental exposures. She is also interested in NCD management in humanitarian crises, and how to build preparedness for NCD care after climate-related disasters. Prior to coming to Harvard, she worked on a multi-country household air pollution intervention trial and spent most of her time working in Puno, Peru.

The project seeks to use a newly developed tool and pilot it on assessing the out of pocket expenditure to seek surgical care in Karachi, Pakistan and then check whether it could be generalized.

Haitham is doing a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management at HSPH and is a Paul Farmer Global Surgery fellow at the Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School. He did his MD at Ain Shams University in Cairo followed by a DIC, MPH from Imperial College London after winning the UK Government Chevening Scholarship. Haitham work for the WHO, European Commission and has several publications. He also won the King Abdullah II Award for Youth Innovations and Achievements and the UN HABITAT grant award for his DIS IS ABILITY project in Egypt.

Haley’s project is a component of the ongoing international initiative, Healthy Reefs, Healthy I-Kiribati investigating ocean water quality and human-reef interactions.

Haley is a second year Master of Science student in the Environmental Health department at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Haley is interested in heavy metal bioaccumulation and waterborne illnesses, particularly the source and manifestation of ciguatera poisoning. Her research is investigating the critical components of aquatic ecosystems, including the bacteriology, heavy metals, and other chemical constituents present. Previously, she worked in the Harvard Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-Change) mapping underground water contamination from fracking and proximity of fracking sites to school drinking water supplies.

Hannah’s project with YCMS will use Photovoice techniques to explore what youth identify as supports and barriers to having a healthy relationship with their body.

Hannah is a Population Health Science PhD candidate in the Nutrition department. Her research interests lie in understanding how youth, especially those with marginalized identities, develop healthy relationships to their bodies and food, and how socialization/social context supports and impedes that process and its impacts on chronic disease risk and outcomes.

Hannah’s project will involve learning from the local immigrant community what methods of information dissemination are best for specific linguistic and cultural groups in order to best communicate a public awareness campaign on what public charge does/does not cover, and the status of the lawsuits blocking changes from being implemented.

Hannah is an MPH-45 student in the Health Policy and Management Department. She is also a medical student at UCSF where she is a part of PRIME-US, a University of California statewide medical training program focused on meeting the needs of California’s urban underserved populations.

Kasley’s project focuses on promoting social health through intergenerational connection.

Kasley is a graduate student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her background is in community engagement, healthcare innovation, and mental health research. Learn more and connect with her at kasleykillam.com.

Neil’s project seeks to evaluate the extent to which a new intervention designed to bring mobile tuberculosis (TB) management to the home has been successful in averting cases of pediatric TB and in mitigating the barriers to healthcare he identified as an undergraduate student.

Neil is an SM80 student in the Department of Epidemiology, pursuing a concentration in Clinical Epidemiology. His research focuses on characterizing outcomes among children exposed to and living with HIV in order to inform the design of clinical and public health interventions that reduce their infectious disease burden. He is particularly interested in asset-based community development approaches to epidemiologic investigation. In his free time, Neil works to develop human rights-based approaches to the delivery of medical care for populations living with HIV and associated infectious diseases. He holds a B.A. in Biology and Human Rights from Columbia University.

Yian’s project aims to explore the underlying reasons of low quality of care in rural ethnic China and find out ways to incentivize primary care clinicians.

Yian is a SM-80 student in the Department of Global Health and Population. He is interested in designing and evaluating systemic health care interventions to improve efficiency and equity of health care delivery, and analyzing the political economy of health system reform.

Alen is ethnographically investigating the dynamics between academics, low-wage factory workers, and corporate executives as global brand Levi Strauss & Co. leads the apparel industry by partnering with Harvard Chan’s Project SHINE to monitor worker well-being at four factories governed by Apparel International, INC, Levi’s primary supplier in Mexico.

Alen is a candidate for a Doctor of Science (’20) in Social & Behavioral Sciences, with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice through the Film Study Center at Harvard University. In the interdisciplinary style of the medical humanities, Alen ties public health together with medical anthropology, civic education, aesthetic philosophy and art practice to solve and better understand population health dilemmas. His current and previous research involves the use of multimodal approaches such as participatory action research, performance ethnography and psychometrics to investigate such concepts as diet, happiness, work and bureaucracy. He earned a BS-MS in Nutrition & Food Science at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College, where he was also trained in program development and evaluation.

SPRING 2019 Fellows

Through community based participatory research, Cristina will create a questionnaire that reflects marginalized Canadians´ experience in childbirth.

Cristina is a Doctor of Public Health specializing in Sexual and Reproductive Health. She worked for 18 years in Latin America improving access to safe abortion and childbirth. She worked with the Mexican Ministry of Health to integrate midwifery into the health care system and is a global leader in expending birth centers to low and middle-income countries.

Murphy’s project focuses on storytelling and how it can be used as a healing tool, as well as a method of creating community, health, and equity.

Murphy is an MPH candidate in the Department of Global Health and Population with a concentration on Human Rights, Humanitarian Studies and Ethics. Her greatest joy is being a sister. Murphy grew up in North Dakota and is interested in programming around stories, kindness, and inclusion. She believes that humans care about humans and wants to base her life’s work on this belief.

Marisa is developing a SWOT analysis of the state of existing health services, especially behavioral health, for underserved communities in Prince George’s County through interviewing key stakeholders and community members.

Marisa is an MPH-65 student in the Global Health and Population department. Her professional background is in advocacy and communications around public health and environmental issues in the US and internationally. Her interest areas include behavioral health, improving access to quality care for underserved communities, and health equity.

Jane’s project focuses on developing a framework to understand the factors that promote mental well-being in early childhood in Cambridge, with the ultimate goal of identifying strategies to reduce the mental and physical health disparities that emerge during this developmental stage.

Jane is an MPH-65 student in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, with an interdisciplinary concentration in Maternal and Child Health. Her research interests include the social, behavioral, and environmental determinants of children’s mental health; the design and implementation of population-level interventions to promote mental health, particularly in early childhood; the use of health communications and social marketing to reduce health disparities; and the development of population health indicators.

Irene’s project looks at how health services can engage with families and caregivers, including children, more effectively.

Irene is an MPH student in the social and behavioral sciences department. Her research interests are the public health effects of mental illness and children of parents with a mental illness. Before beginning her MPH, she worked for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and received her B.A. from Yale University.

Maia is focusing her efforts on expanding the reach of the Children’s Environmental Health Network’s Eco-Healthy Childcare (EHCC) Program, which is a network and resource base for home and center-based daycare providers who wish to reduce environmental hazards in their classrooms and promote health equity among the children in their care.

Maia is pursuing an MPH in the Environmental Health department, with a concentration in Maternal and Child Health. She has worked in the fields of natural disaster response, early childhood education, and public health research, and seeks to use environmental health insights to assess and promote public policy surrounding children’s health and wellness.

Matt is co-creating a capacity building program and broader strategy for young mental health innovator networks in Nairobi and Chennai with citiesRISE.

Matt aims to pursue global health justice through community organizing, adaptive leadership, and innovation. Before grad school, Matt designed and implemented Deworm the World’s first knowledge management and learning strategy, supporting deworming programs that reached over 270 million children in 2017. Previously, Matt worked with Grand Challenges Canada to model the long-term impacts of global health innovations and with Unity Charity to evaluate the impacts of hip-hop programs on youth resilience. He also supported evidence-informed decision-making in several governments, including through South Africa’s Presidency and Ethiopia’s Compassionate and Respectful Health System initiative, and taught undergraduate global health at McMaster University.

Benjamin’s project focuses on supporting sexual and reproductive health programming in crisis and post-crisis settings.

Benjamin is an MPH student in the Global Health and Population department. His interests are in maternal and child health with a particular focus on access to high quality obstetric and newborn care in low resource settings.

Hae-In’s project focuses on developing a Community Health Needs Assessment/Community Health Improvement Plan for Boston Children’s Hospital through community engagement and data analysis.

Hae-In is an MPH-65 student in the SBS department. Before coming to Harvard Hae-In worked for non-profits and local government in sunny Southern California. Hae-In has been trained around program evaluation, community engagement and needs assessments. In her future career Hae-In is interested in addressing health inequities by looking at ‘upstream’ factors of health such as employment, housing and education. Hae-In hopes to do this through community engagement and cross-sectoral collaboration. Her position with Boston Children’s this summer will provide her an opportunity to practice shared leadership in identifying community-level health needs.

Sarah is working with CMBM to develop and expand partnerships with health organizations in Jordan serving refugees in Jordan

Sarah is an MPH student in the Global Health department. Her professional background is in digital health solutions, with experience in the US, the Netherlands, Denmark, Tanzania, Liberia, and Ethiopia. Her research and post-Harvard professional interests are in refugee mental health, humanitarian systems, and the interaction of technology and human rights in the humanitarian field.

Sitara’s project focuses on exploring the results of an oral health screening program for schoolchildren in Cambridge, and assessing how the program can be expanded.

Sitara is an MPH student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Her academic interests include program planning, implementation, and evaluation; health literacy; and reproductive health. She is pursuing Concentrations in Health Communication and Women, Gender, and Health at HSPH. Prior to starting at HSPH in Fall 2018, Sitara worked in development and operations at a breast cancer nonprofit in New York City.

Through a mixed methods study and in collaboration with a community organization in Puerto Rico, Abrania’s research seeks to assess agricultural resources, social connectedness, and physiological stress after Hurricane Maria.

Abrania is a doctoral student completing a degree in Population Health Sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Her research interests seek to investigate the intersection of health, environmental sustainability, and human flourishing. Currently, her work integrates methods in nutritional epidemiology and planetary health to identify points of intervention in food systems that can promote healthful diets, climate change resilience, and sustainable agricultural development.

Alicia is communicating the health effects of PM2.5 to decision makers and wood burning stove owners, aiming to promote community-driven solutions within an EPA nonattainment area.

Alicia is an MPH-65 Health Policy student from Norfolk, VA. She graduated with a BA from the University of Minnesota in 2015, and ultimately decided to pursue an MPH after working on prenatal substance use in the Deep South. Since coming to HSPH, she has developed an interest in decision science and a new appreciation for state and local health policy solutions. She is also conversationally fluent in Korean thanks to the U.S. State Department.

Monica’s project explores the model and implementation of Total Health, a CSR initiative by Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, that provides holistic health care to 60,000 people in Thavanampalle Mandal (Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India) starting from the birth, through their journey into childhood, adolescence, adulthood and in the latter years of lives.

Monica is an MPH student from Indonesia, in Global Health and Population department. Her interests lie on the intersection of human and ecosystem health, as well as country-level health systems and economics. She has 6 years of work experience in managing a non-profit in rural Indonesia, providing healthcare, economic empowerment, and conservation programs to the underprivileged community living nearby the rainforest of Gunung Palung National Park.

Ned’s project involved mapping noncommunicable disease related deaths after Hurricane Maria to identify health systems failures and improve the resilience and preparedness of Dominican communities for future storm.

Ned is an MPH student in Global Health, while also a global health fellow at Boston Children’s Hospital. Previously, he has worked in India, Palestine, Nepal, Laos, Malawi and the Navajo Nation. His research interests are in community preparedness and resilience in humanitarian disasters, with ongoing research in Dominica.

Urvashi’s project examines the effect of providing access to free fruits & vegetables through the service of a mobile produce market on dietary habits, health outcomes, and healthcare costs, as well as the ways in which the Greater Boston Food Bank might improve the accessibility, availability, and acceptability of the mobile produce market and the foods that it distributes.

Urvashi is a master’s student in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She is interested in the intersection of minority health and well-being, the social determinants that influence positive or negative health outcomes, the factors that promote well-being, and how to design community-based interventions and systems changes to improve quality of life.

Sian’s project aims to inform future policies by exploring what factors would motivate rural primary health care providers to take up artificial intelligence algorithms for better medical care.

Sian is a doctoral student in the Global Health and Populations Department. He was trained as a family physician in Canada and is now interested in health systems policies, specifically around financial and behavioral interventions. He is also interested in medical education.

Kelsey’s project is with The Greater Boston Food Bank, where she is contributing to focus groups examining a mobile produce market initiative and examining data from a survey measuring hunger among food pantry users.

Kelsey Vercammen is a doctoral student in the Department of Epidemiology. Her research portfolio focuses on nutritional epidemiology, with particular areas of interest including causes and points of intervention for obesity, as well as the role of federal nutrition assistance programs in reducing food insecurity and promoting dietary quality.