Center for Global Health announces spring travel grant recipients

The MUSC Center for Global Health recently announced its 2024 spring recipients of student and trainee Global Health travel grant awards.

Annually, the center offers MUSC students and resident trainees opportunities to apply for grants of up to $2,000 each for international travel to low- and middle-income countries. The goal of each award is to assist recipients in furthering their global health service learning and training in communities abroad.

This year’s student and trainee global health travel grant awardees include:

Ethan Barkley

• College of Medicine
• Project Title: Global Health Flex – Soddo
• Location: Soddo, Ethiopia
• Project description: At Soddo Christian Hospital, Barkley will be rotating through various clinical services on campus. During most of the month, he will be involved in projects with the Family Medicine and Pediatrics Departments, including an analysis of the efficacy and efficiency of the SALSA technique in neonates receiving surfactant, an assessment of the burden of rheumatic heart disease among adolescents and a survey study measuring maternal satisfaction with filtered sunlight phototherapy for neonatal jaundice. His role in these studies will involve assisting hospital faculty with data collection and analysis.

Parker Lewis, M.D.

• College of Medicine, Emergency Medicine
• Project Title: Refugee Medicine in Masindi, Uganda
• Location: Masindi, Uganda
• Project description: Lewis will be providing medical care for the South Sudanese refugees near Bweyale, Uganda. He will work with the local staff to conduct a needs assessment to provide better clinical care to the at-risk population. General responsibilities will include interviewing and examining patients independently, collaborating with an attending physician and available specialists, developing plans of care for a diverse array of patients and pathologies, and training healthcare staff on the proper use of automated external defibrillators.

Emily Meiring

• College of Health Professions
• Project Title: Public Health Global Immersion Program for Doctoral Capstone
• Location: Delhi, India
• Project description: Meiring will be observing local occupational therapists and clinicians in Delhi for two weeks to support her capstone project related to increasing student confidence with the concept of cultural humility through educational resources. Meiring will be visiting Tamana, a non-profit serving individuals with autism, and Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, which is a rehabilitation and research hospital providing medical management and rehabilitation to individuals with orthopedic and neurological injuries.

Isabel Miller

• College of Health Professions
• Project Title: Clinical Outreach to Uganda
• Location: Masindi, Uganda
• Project description: In Masindi, Miller will seek to provide and share education about nutrition with mothers and prepare an easy-to-understand infographic on foods that are needed for a balanced and healthy diet. The purpose of the project work is in providing resources and education to families to decrease the rates of malnutrition in children and the mortality rate of infants due to lack of nutrition.

Julia Moore

• College of Health Professions
• Project Title: Creating and Educating the Local Occupational Therapist on Production and Use of Sustainable Adaptive Feeding Utensils
• Location: Masindi, Uganda
• Project description: In Masindi, Moore will be participating in project work that will offer pop-up clinics to individuals in rural areas of Uganda who lack access to traditional care. She will also support education of in-country occupational therapists on simple adaptations that can be made to feeding utensils along with other tools frequently used for activities of daily living to allow for Ugandans with such needs to be more independent.

Sierra Patterson

• College of Medicine
• Project Title: Impacts of Cinterandes Foundation on Surgical Disparities in Rural Ecuador
• Location: Cuenca, Ecuador
• Project description: In Ecuador, Patterson will work to collect data to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the impact of the Cinterandes Foundation’s mobile surgery unit on access to surgical care, financial burden, and surgical capacity in the country. She will travel with the local professional team on the mobile surgery unit and practice basic clinical work. The goal of this collaboration is to strengthen surgical care in the field of general surgery and working in low-resource settings.

Kaitlyn Pereira, M.D.

• College of Medicine, Emergency Medicine
• Project Title: Introduction and application of Ultrasound-guided IVs in Uganda
• Location: Masindi, Uganda
• Project description: In Uganda, the application of ultrasound, specifically point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS), is extremely limited due to the lack of previous exposure, ultrasound education, and ultrasound resources. POCUS is used daily by trained emergency medicine physicians in the United States as it has demonstrated improved patient care outcomes. Through this project, Pereira will seek to educate local nurses and physicians on how to place an ultrasound-guided IV. Bedside teaching with a handheld ultrasound provided by the MUSC Ultrasound Division will occur daily with multiple nursing and physician groups.

Erin Williams

• College of Health Professions
• Project Title: Improving Comprehensive Assessment and Prosthetic Delivery for Adults and Children with Lower Limb Amputation
• Location: Masindi, Uganda
• Project description: In her project, Williamson will seek to develop a comprehensive standardized intake evaluation form that addresses the specific needs of patients with transtibial amputations in Masindi, Uganda. Her goal is to develop a process for lower limb prosthetic creation and delivery with the use of a mobile app for creating 3D scans of residual limbs as well as creating objects with a 3D printer.

Sydney Worrall

• College of Medicine
• Project Title: Health Policies in Bolivia: vector-borne diseases
• Location: Tarija, Bolivia
• Project description: In her project, Worrall will seek to study and understand the Bolivian health system with emphasis on important health policies related to prevalent health problems in the area, including vector-borne diseases with a focus on Chagas disease, which is endemic to the region. She will participate in research of the health care system, the policies surrounding vector-borne diseases, the laboratory identification of the vectors specific to Bolivia in the Entomology Department and the social and cultural determinants of health.

Interested applicants were required to submit a cover page, project proposal, personal essay, program budget, three letters of support and resume. Awardees must use the funds within the next 12 months.

In addition to the funds provided to support their travels, students and trainee grant recipients also have access to free resources from the University’s travel, health and security assistance provider, International SOS, as do all individuals traveling abroad while representing MUSC. The company offers 24/7 access to medical and travel assistance, emotional and mental health support and security advice while abroad. Students and trainees are required to comply with the MUSC international travel policy, including requesting review and approval via the University’s travel registry.

For more information about the center’s travel grants, please visit https://web.musc.edu/about/global-health/funding/student-and-trainee-travel-grant.