The Global Health Academic Concentration
Follow UC San Diego School of Medicine's GHAC students around the world.
It was early and the sun was still low when I started picking alpaquinoa. The thick-stalked plants are usually treated as weeds, but the leaves make a delicious addition to salads. Luis, the farm manager, instructed me to pluck off the leaves one by one so they could be put into bags and included in … Continue reading The Cinca Farm in the Ecuadorian Highlands
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
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…)
I have officially been in Ecuador for 1 week and 1 day! It has been quite the adventure thus far. I arrived after midnight and thus stayed in a hotel in Quito my first night. I met my coworkers and host family the next day. I could not be any luckier; my host family is … Continue reading Las primeras Aventuras en Ecuador de Li-Li
On Friday, the group, ESPINA, for which I have been working completed its data gathering portion of the study as they seek to determine the effects of secondary exposure to pesticides in children. In total, we collected data in 5 different cities within the county of Pedro Moncayo and over 400 hundred children were included … Continue reading Coming to a close
Sitting here in Tabacundo, Ecuador, I have just finished my first two days of helping gather data in rural communities. Before this began, my wife Maggie and I had been enrolled in a two-week course run through CIMA, the organization running the ESPINA project. This course focused on understanding the diversity of Ecuador’s communities, the … Continue reading Hola de Ecuador