The Global Health Academic Concentration
Follow UC San Diego School of Medicine's GHAC students around the world.
Brief recap of what I did this summer. 16 June: MS1 ended (whoo) 17 June – 21 June: kicked it in Santa Barbara, LA, and Big Bear, where I climbed Sugarloaf Mountain to train for Mt. Kilimanjaro 22 June: flew from LAX à Amsterdam à Kilimanjaro 23 June – July 3: climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with … Continue reading Mountains Beyond Mountains: A Peripatetic Mzungu On the Hunt for Drugs in Uganda
It was 11:00am on a hot July day. Inside a small green tent in a rural fishing village on the banks of Lake Victoria, an HIV counselor was speaking with two local women about a new study related to alcohol use and intimate partner violence. Outside, an intoxicated fisherman staggered around the tent, hollering unintelligible … Continue reading Integrating an Alcohol and Violence Screening and Brief Intervention into HIV Post-test Counseling: Observations from a Ugandan Fishing Community on Lake Victoria
Hola! This will be my first time fully explaining what I’ve been researching here in Quito in English. I’ve become accustomed to giving brief synopses of my work to my host family, new friends I meet, cab drivers, store owners, etc. in Spanish and actually, my research has been conducted 100% in Spanish as well. … Continue reading Research in Quito
Força! A professor enthusiastically told me after I described the project our team was working on, and I thought to myself: force? What did he mean? Força is a term of encouragement offering energy and motivation to keep doing what you are doing. Everyone here has been very supportive, enthusiastic, and dedicated to the research … Continue reading Força
Part 1: La Selva Amazonica I last signed off before taking a trip to La Selva Amazonica (Amazonian Jungle) with my Child Family Health International (CFHI) friends. One of our two guides is a Spanish teacher for the CFHI program and invited me to join the group on this journey to the Amazonian jungle. We … Continue reading Las Aventuras al Aire Libre (I promise I am here to do research too…)
With four weeks down and four to go, I can confidently say I love this country. After a 33 hour trip, I landed in Uganda for the first time. While Kampala is one of the most crowded and busy cities I’ve ever seen and there seems to be a frightening lack of enforced traffic laws, … Continue reading Uganda, the first of hopefully many visits.
I came to Barranco on a Sunday morning to solve my ceviche problem. The problem had been that in Peru, ceviche is only eaten in the first half of the day, to minimize the hours between catch and consumption, and my workplace in Lima was not near enough any well-reviewed ceviche restaurant for me get … Continue reading Pescado, Pinturas, and Post-Colonial Decay in Distrito Barranco
After climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, I boarded a plane headed for Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where I would spend a week doing a historical and cultural tour of the country. I would visit Addis Ababa (the current capital of Ethiopia), Axum (the capital of the Axumite empire), Lalibela (the capital of the Zagwe empire), … Continue reading Ethiopia
First impressions, gut instincts, and intuition are interesting things. We are taught, whether blatantly or subconsciously, to trust these feelings—It’s necessary. They help make rapid decision-making possible. The ER doctor in the middle of running a code, the police officer responding to a call, the solo female traveler walking down an unknown street, they all … Continue reading First Impressions
I was beyond excited to find out that I would be spending the summer of 2017 in Uganda conducting field research on malaria. I was originally inspired to pursue medicine by the example and ideas of Dr. Paul Farmer, who has spent his career working in low-resource settings and advocating for a preferential option for … Continue reading Mt. Kilimanjaro: You are doing good, you are doing great