Every year, the Department of Global Health offers funding and fellowships to graduate and professional students at the University of Washington to help support in-depth fieldwork experiences in global health. Past participants have studied obstetric experiences of indigenous communities and biomedical providers in the suburban area of Mitú, Colombia, evaluated the effectiveness of the Teenage Empowerment Program of the Maasai Association with a goal to curb teenage pregnancy, early marriage, and female genital mutilation in Kenya, and designed a qualitative needs assessment for the WHO emergency care systems framework.
This year we have awarded 12 international fellowships to support the projects and research of graduate students at UW for the next academic year. Students from varied disciplines across the University of Washington, including global health, epidemiology, pathobiology, and implementation science will travel to 8 countries to engage, learn, and pursue fieldwork experience.
The Department's travel fellowships are funded through the generous donations of private individuals and organizations.
Thomas Francis Jr. Global Health Fellowship
Sali Ahmed, PhD Student, Department of Global Health | Ethiopia
Sali is a PhD student within the Global Health Metrics and Implementation Science Program. With support from the Thomas Francis Jr. Global Health Fellowship, she will be traveling to Ethiopia to focus on health policy within resource-constrained settings. Her study aims to identify and understand the preferences of health planners and policy makers by recognizing the attributes that prioritize health interventions included in Essential Health Benefits Packages. Health planners must make informed trade-offs when deciding which interventions to expand to their populations, particularly for countries such as Ethiopia that are striving to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC). Sali advocates for the maintenance of a transparent and accountable priority-setting process that is vital for the successful attainment of UHC in low- and middle-income countries, including Ethiopia.
Erin Barnett, PhD Student, Department of Global Health | Mexico
Erin is a PhD student within the Pathobiology research program in the department of Global Health. Since joining Dr. Daniel Blanco-Melo’s research laboratory, she has undertaken a project aimed at elucidating viral evolution through the analysis of historical human lung samples. Erin's research project directly collaborates with Dr. María Ávila-Arcos’ group at the esteemed International Laboratory for Human Genome Research (LIIGH) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) campus in Juriquilla, Mexico. Dr. Ávila-Arcos’ group are experts in the field, and together, the team aims to pioneer a new avenue of virology research. In doing part of her dissertation at the LIIGH, Erin hopes to contribute to more robust international collaborations in bench science and maintain those networks throughout her career.
Rara Deathicta Ayuagni Santoso Sudiro Dethan, MPH Student, Department of Global Health | Timor-Leste
Rara is a first-year MPH student within the Department of Global Health. She is planning on travelling to Dili, Timor-Leste, where she will conduct research on her project about understanding healthcare providers' perspectives and experiences regarding ‘Responding to Gender-Based Violence’ training. She focuses on this topic because addressing gender-based violence is crucial in promoting public health and social justice. Through her continued research, Rara aims to contribute valuable insights to improve healthcare responses to gender-based violence in Timor-Leste, ultimately benefiting the community in Dili by enhancing support services and fostering a safer environment for GBV survivors.
Bih Epse Cuba Moki-Suh, PhD Student, Department of Global Health | Cameroon
Bih Epse is a PhD student within the Implementation Science Track at the Department of Global Health. For her service-learning project, she will be traveling to Douala, Cameroon. There, she will initiate her project aiming to increase knowledge and awareness of female-controlled barriers for HIV prevention and to empower displaced women and girls, particularly in Internally Displaced Population (IDP) camps. She chose this topic to address the urgent need for effective HIV prevention strategies in vulnerable populations. Bih Epse hopes that internally displaced communities will benefit from improved access and uptake of female condoms, empowering of women, and girls to advocate for their sexual and reproductive rights, and thereby addressing gender disparities in HIV prevention efforts.
Edith Dale, MPH Student, Department of Global Health | Kenya
Edith Dale is an MPH student within the Department of Global Health. Her project focuses on addressing the significant health issue of cervical cancer caused primarily by human papillomavirus (HPV), in Nakuru, Kenya. Despite the availability of effective vaccines, many young women, particularly in rural areas, lack awareness and access to cervical cancer screening and HPV vaccination. To bridge this gap, she will collaborate with local health promoters to develop culturally sensitive educational materials and conduct vaccination drives in schools and religious gatherings. Additionally, Edith intends on working with the host organization to promote long-term cervical cancer prevention strategies through workshops, role plays, and meetings with local leaders. Through these efforts, she hopes to increase awareness, encourage screening, and ultimately reduce cervical cancer rates among young women in Nakuru County.
Julian Salim, PhD Student, Department of Global Health | South Africa
Julian is a PhD student specializing in the Implementation Science Track within the Department of Global Health. He will be traveling to KwaZulu Natal, South Africa to study Tuberculosis (TB). TB infects nearly two billion people and is the leading infectious cause of mortality worldwide, largely due to inadequate diagnostic and prognostic tests. His project focuses on conducting prospective clinical evaluations of emerging TB diagnostics, particularly novel urine LAM assays, among adults and children. This work aims to support national TB programs and clinicians in TB-endemic countries by enabling rapid initiation of anti-TB treatment. Julian hopes that the community in KwaZulu Natal will benefit from improved diagnostic tools and faster treatment initiation, ultimately reducing TB-related morbidity and mortality.
Cynthia Zha, MPH Student, Department of Global Health | Kenya
Cynthia is an MPH student within the Department of Global Health. She will be conducting her research in Naivasha, Kenya, focusing on HPV vaccine education. This research is important because the HPV vaccine is a preventative measure against cervical cancer, which is one of the leading causes of death among women in Kenya. She hopes that the community of Naivasha will benefit from learning the importance of the HPV vaccine and that her collaboration with them will promote an increase in uptake of the vaccine to prevent new cases of cervical cancer from developing.
Kokou Tbah Tighankpa, MPH Student, Department of Global Health | Togo
Kokou Tbah, MD, is an MPH candidate at the School of Public Health within the Department of Global Health. He will conduct his practicum project in Togo, where his focus will be on Assessing Contextual Factors, to Implement the 7-1-7 Target in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): Application of Organizational Readiness for Policy Implementation (OR4PI) Framework. 7-1-7 is a pandemic prevention and preparedness approach that gives countries' health systems the opportunity for organized, timely, and impactful responses during epidemics and pandemics. 7-1-7 stands for 7 days towards detecting a probable outbreak, 1 day to start an epidemiological investigation, and 7 days to start field operation, which Togo has recently piloted. However, would the adaptation of the intervention to the country’s health system be successful? Togo scores 36 on the epidemic response and preparedness metric, compared to the US, which scores 87. The gap is immense and the recent COVID-19 pandemic exposed limitations within the country's health system. As a Togolese, Kokou Tbah has dreamt of a robust health system that is more resilient against infectious diseases and is ready to respond quickly in times of need. Hence, this project aims to explore the facilitating and hindering factors for implementing the 7-1-7 target approach for outbreak and pandemic early action in rural and urban Togo. He believes that this project will enormously benefit the local community in many ways, but more importantly, support the Ministry of Health of Togo in elaborating interventions, their implementation, and their assessments to contribute to social justice and address disparities between rural and urban regions.
Tessa Fujisaki, MPH Student, Department of Global Health | Kenya
Tessa is an MPH student within the Department of Global Health. With support from the Thomas Francis, Jr. Global Health Fellowship, she will travel to Kisumu, Kenya to work on the ongoing Integrated Perinatal Mental Health Study (IPMH), led by Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) and the University of Washington. This study seeks to develop and test an integrated stepped care intervention in maternal child healthcare settings that addresses perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMAD) among women in Kisumu. She is interested in global maternal and child health, mental health, and community-based implementation research. She plans to work with the KNH team and Kisumu community to develop the intervention. Prior to her time in Kisumu, she will spend two months learning Swahili through the Critical Language Scholarship program, and hopes to utilize her new language skills both during this fellowship and in future collaborations with Kenyan communities.
Anna Kellogg, MPH Student, Department of Epidemiology | Botswana
Anna is an MPH student within the School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology. She will complete her practicum as a research associate at the Botswana Harvard Health Institute Partnership in Gaborone, Botswana. There, her study will address suboptimal rates of caregiver disclosure to children HIV-exposed uninfected (CHEU) who are at increased risk of infectious morbidity, mortality, poorer growth and neurodevelopmental delays compared to children born HIV-unexposed uninfected (CHUU). As HIV global services expand, Anna is interested in further contextualizing the evolution of the HIV epidemic among children who avoid HIV infection but remain HIV-affected. She hopes that her work will contribute a measured impact on incidence of HIV acquisition among adolescents and increase rates of maternal disclosure among caregivers in Gaborone.
Wendy Dlamini, PhD Student, Department of Epidemiology | Kenya
Wendy is a second-year PhD student within the School of Public Health’s Department of Epidemiology. For her project, she will be traveling to Nairobi, Kenya to focus on examining the relationship between HIV and age-related conditions like frailty and osteoporosis in Kenyan women aged 50 years and older living with HIV. The burden of age-related non-AIDS-defining comorbidities in people living with HIV (PLWH) and the African population is poorly understood. Therefore, this research aims to build epidemiologic evidence on aging among PLWH in Africa and enhance healthcare practices and policies for PLWH in Kenya. Additionally, Wendy aims to use her research to inform the development of tools for screening age-related conditions and strategies for preventing and managing the co-occurrence of HIV, geriatric syndromes, and chronic comorbidities.
Ermyas Birru, PhD Student, Department of Global Health | Ethiopia
Ermyas is a fourth-year PhD candidate specializing in the Implementation Science Track within the Department of Global Health. He will be traveling to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to conduct an implementation science workshop for Addis Ababa University's Health Science department PhD students and faculties. Ermyas is using this opportunity granted by the Thomas Francis Jr. Global Health Fellowship to share the knowledge he gained during his time at UW in the Implementation Science Program with those in Ethiopia who are eager to learn about it. Through this collaborative effort, he aims to enhance the quality of health service delivery and reduce redundancy in evidence-based innovations, particularly for maternal and child health programs in the country. He believes that strengthening relationships with Ethiopian academics interested in implementation science is beneficial, as it provides them with new or improved knowledge of implementation research. Additionally, it will allow him to support and mentor those who are interested in this research topic.