Project Descriptions

2015 Projects

Wynonna Ardiansyah

Wynonna worked with Jesncin, a Hong Kong-based organization made up of comic artists and illustrators, to help out with one of their projects. The project consisted of a short comic illustrating the role of ethnomedicine and its impact in Hong Kong’s contemporary society. Wynonna was responsible for gathering research, conducting ethnographic interviews and collaborating with local voices and experts. She also supported the illustrative and comic creation processes from proofreading scripts to standing in for reference poses.

Wynonna learned about historical, contemporary, global and local narratives of ethnomedicine, and also gained insight into the health systems of Hong Kong. She was able to experience a different side of public health and learn more about the process of creating, publishing and disseminating creative content.

Miranda Harris

Miranda carried out intensive research in a rural Ecuadorian village of 1800 persons from January 3 – 13, 2016. She studied the cultural perception of the Chikungunya disease. Chikungunya virus is a mosquito-borne arbovirus transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes that results in Chikungunya fever, characterized by rashes, bone and joint aches, and high fever. There is no cure, treatment is palliative, and chronic joint pain is a long-term effect of the disease. With IRB approval, thirty interviews were conducted through a convenience sample of community members that claim to have had Chikungunya. The product of Miranda’s project was a set of Chikungunya narratives, told from the perspectives of the sufferers. These provide insight into how villagers understand the disease and how they experienced it.

Katherine Lane

Katherine performed research with Prof. Rachel Brem at the Buck Institute in Novato, California. She studied a species of fungus called Cryptococcus neoformans. Cryptococcus neoformans-caused meningitis is the most common fungal infection of the central nervous system and the third most frequent neurological complication in AIDS patients. Cryptococcus neoformans is responsible for up to 30% mortality in AIDS patients in places where highly active antiretroviral therapy is not available. Related species can also infect people who are not immunocompromised.

In the Brem lab, she participated in a collaborative project with Joe Heitman at Duke University and Chaoyang Xue at Rutgers. This project involved data from genome-scale transcriptional surveys of two long-diverged subspecies of Cryptococcus neoformans, called serotypes A and D, and a diploid hybrid formed from the mating between them. Her first project focused on the fact that the Cryptococcus neoformans AD hybrid is more resistant to drug treatment and to environmental stress than each of the purebred serotypes. The mechanism of these advantages is almost completely unknown, and Katherine hypothesized that hybrid-specific expression programs may help fill this knowledge gap. She wrote computer code to carry out statistical comparisons between the expression profiles of the hybrid and its purebred parents. She also investigated the evolutionary divergence between the A and D serotypes.

Dung (Jessica) Pham

Jessica conducted a public health project about autism in Vietnam. She collaborated with Dr. Minh Ngoc Thanh, Division Chief of Child Psychopathology at the National Hospital of Pediatrics in Hanoi to evaluate the effectiveness of PECS (Picture Exchange Communications System) – a method that was being implemented in the division. Jessica had the opportunity to work with children with autism in the hospital, observe individual sessions, attend training workshops for parents and medical staffs from other provincial hospitals. She received help from the hospital staffs to design an educational leaflet that addressed misperceptions about autism with a goal to reduce stigma and encourage help-seeking behavior. These leaflets also provided information about early warning signs of autism at different ages. Jessica collaborated with Hanoi Center for Preventive Medicine to distribute the leaflets at various vaccination locations to target parents with young kids. Jessica also volunteered and observed at several private providers of services to children with autism in Hanoi including the Hope Center and Green Rainbow Kindergarten.

Kyoko Peterson

Kyoko worked at the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic in San Francisco, CA. 3rd Street is located in the Bayview Hunters Point (BVHP) neighborhood, one of the lowest income areas in the city, and serves a primarily African-American and immigrant community. Youth in the community face physical and mental health challenges that most youth never experience—the area has numerous environmentally harmful sites, including the Naval Shipyard, and one of the highest rates of crime in SF.

One of the issues the clinic had was giving youth appropriate health information, especially sexual health information. All the flyers that 3rd St had to give out are wordy and lengthy. Kyoko’s project was to create flyers that were visual, concise, and easy to follow. She created 8 flyers on both STDs and birth control.

Chidyaonga Shalita

Chidyaonga used the Winter Mann-Hill grant for the Macalester emergency medical technician (EMT) course taught over the j-term. The course was intense and Chidyaonga spent approximately 100 hours inside the classroom learning about basic life support skills. In addition he learned about the various medical and trauma emergencies that are typically encountered during an ambulance response. The EMT course was an invaluable experience because it exposed me to emergency medicine.

This course has been an integral part of Chidyaonga’s decision about attending medical school. The EMT class made it increasingly clear that medical school is the right direction for him. In addition working as an EMT is an excellent way for Chidyaonga to get some real “hands-on” experience practicing basic medicine and treating patients. 

2014 Projects

Sofia Halperin

Sofia conducted an oral history project with eight immigrant Latina mothers that harnessed storytelling as a form of sanación (healing), specifically in relation to being a parent outside of one’s country of origin. In addition to individual video recording of each participant’s story, the mothers gathered as a group on two occasions to reflect on the project, their stories, and the power of collective healing.

Pia Mingkwan and Margaret Nemetz

Pia and Margaret worked with the Soukhya Project team on Domestic Violence Screening and Prevention at St. John’s Medical College and Research Institute in Bangalore, India. The Soukhya Project uses the primary health care system as an entry point for screening and preventing domestic violence. Pia and Margaret worked on two projects; the first was organizing a workshop for a group of NGOs and organizations that work in urban and rural Bangalore to share their expertise on how to develop a system that will be effective in rural Bangalore. The second project involved filming video segments to create a testimonial video that the Soukhya Project will use in trainings for health workers.  Some of the segments will be used in an informational and promotional video for the Soukhya Project.

Siyabonga Ndwandwe

Siyabonga worked in health services research at Curatio International Foundation in Tbilisi, Georgia. He helped develop a quantitative and qualitative database for a research project that evaluates the impact of Global Fund’s new financing model on the HIV/AIDS epidemics. The research included data from18 countries, where investments were significantly reduced and/or eliminated over the past 2-5 years. The major focus was on the eastern European region. 

2013 Projects

Lily Alexander

Lily worked with DC Greens, a non-profit organization that connects communities to healthy, fresh food in Washington, D.C. Lily was involved with developing a program design assessment of the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription (FVRx), a program based on the idea that eating fresh, healthy food is the best form of medicine. Physicians select the FVRx participants and give them prescriptions for fruits and vegetables that they redeem at various local farmers markets. As part of the program design evaluation, Lily conducted six qualitative interviews with a variety of people involved in the program, and identified factors leading to the program’s success as well as areas for improvement. The program design assessment Lily created will be used as a baseline for evaluating the FVRx program as it continues to expand. In addition to the program, Lily also designed classroom lessons related to seed identification, food systems, plant life cycles, and whole versus processed foods that will be used in classrooms by DC Greens staff.

Adrian Chang

Adrian continued his work in a cancer research lab at the University of Minnesota. He explored a cellular transduction pathway in human cell lines and transgenic mouse tumor cells.  The goal of his project was to determine if Epiregulin (Ereg), a member of the epidermal growth factor family, was a good marker for Ductal Carcinoma in situ (DCIS) that may become an invasive cancer.

Lizzy Magnuson

Lizzy was a Leader in Training (LIT) for Rising Minds in the towns of San Pedro and San Juan around Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. She did much of the logistical planning and curriculum development aspects of the expedition preparation for the group of Macalester students who were participating in Rising Minds. Lizzy created the monitoring and evaluation systems necessary to document each activity of the expedition and thus gather the qualitative and quantitative data necessary to allow Rising Minds to receive grants to further fund their programming.

Antsa Randriamihaja

Antsa worked on a project to create and increase dental hygiene awareness among elementary school kids in two public schools in the rural area of Ihazolava, Madagascar, where there are no dental clinics. She worked closely with Eddy Ramarokoto, DDS, from TSINJO Association to visit the schools.

Clementine Sanchez

Clementine worked in Arusha, Tanzania, organizing health education workshops for a group of women and a group of primary school students, affiliated with JUAf, a grassroots organization whose goal is to empower women and children. The first workshop was about the prevention of HIV/AIDS with the group of women. The second workshop was for the school children about the importance of good hygiene: cleaning hands, cleaning fruits and vegetables before eating and brushing teeth. With the remaining funds from the Winter Mann-Hill Fellowship, she helped build a cemented flat gutter to provide irrigation from kitchen taps to crops.

Elizabeth Wiggans

Elizabeth worked on a research project at the Eating Disorders Program at Children’s Hospital Colorado.  This program treats children, young adults, and adolescents who struggle with anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and other eating disorders. Elizabeth joined the program’s ongoing research project focusing on the development of more effective treatment methods of eating disorders.  Elizabeth continued her project while studying abroad in Lima, Peru, in spring 2014. She investigated the perceptions of eating disorders within the Peruvian community and conducted interviews with many Peruvians on their definitions of eating disorders and positive self-image. She also visited multiple eating disorder clinics in Lima to learn more about the ways in which they approach treatment.  Elizabeth created a “positive self-image” mural that was put on display at La Casa de Panchita, an NGO in Lima that works to promote the rights and safe-working conditions of domestic workers. 

Yang Zhang

Yang worked with the Division of Indian Work (DIW) to raise awareness of health issues among Native American communities in the Twin Cities. He assisted with hosting a series of health forums that addressed community health topics. He also cooperated with a Youth Leadership Development Program to provide basic first aid training sessions for teen groups.

2012 Projects

Lucia Callizo

Lucia worked with Curatio International Foundation (CIF) in the Republic of Georgia. She was responsible for developing two literature digests; one on the factors affecting the cost of routine immunization programs and the second on the variables that influence these costs during vaccine introduction. Lucia became acquainted with routine immunization programs and factors that affect their cost. She researched how expanded programs for immunization are structured across countries, and how wastage and coverage rates influence total and marginal costs.

Rosie Glenn-Finer

Rosie worked with Tubman, an organization in Minneapolis that provides shelter and social services for women and families leaving a domestic violence situation. She planned a health resource fair for Tubman clients that would take place in late winter. As part of the planning, Rose talked with clients to learn what specific resources they needed and wanted to learn about. She used this information to identify resources and services.  Fair “vendors” included representatives from various health-focused non-profits, community clinics, and state health programs that connect residents with resources and provide screenings and services. In addition to planning the health fair, Rosie helped connect clients to the Minnesota Brain Injury Alliance (MBIA) to address the relationship between brain injury and domestic violence. 

Percy Griffin

There is very little information in the medical literature about Type II diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa. Percy went to Ghana and interviewed several medical professionals and herbalists to understand the landscape of Type II diabetes in his home country.  He interviewed doctors caring for patients with Type II diabetes at the General Hospital in Tema and gained insight into the management of the disease with drugs as well as education efforts to prevent deaths.  Percy also interviewed an herbalist who uses plants to treat and cure Type II diabetes. The herbalist is a pioneering member of the Center for Scientific Research into Plant Medicine in Mampong.

Damon Hardy

Damon returned to the lab he worked in during the summer of 2012 at the University of Iowa. His project was to elucidate the role that an adapter protein, Gads, plays in T-cell mediated signaling. Scientific literature indicates that Gads

is involved in cell proliferation. In addition to learning new lab techniques, he was able to recognize the connection between basic and translational research and broader issues in public health.  Damon came to a realization that many things are connected even if the association is not readily apparent.

Glafira Marcon

Glarfina worked in Maputo, Mozambique, at Fanelo Ya Mina, an organization that focuses on HIV/AIDS.  Glafira designed a questionnaire about factors inhibiting access to reproductive health among HIV-positive women.  She invited women to come to Associação Hixikanwe, an HIV clinic in a slum outside of Maputo, to complete the questionnaire. Sixty women came to the clinic and Glafira and two additional translators read and explained the questions to the women. Glafira collected the data and finished analyzing it in her Econometrics class during spring semester. 

2011 Projects

Amelia Axness

Amelia worked with Fairhaven Health in Medford, Oregon, to promote pregnancy wellness at Jackson County Health and Human Services Clinic where the majority of the women qualify for the Oregon Health Plan (OHP), Oregon’s Medicaid program. Amelia discovered that the women visiting the Jackson County clinic needed better educational materials about the role that prenatal vitamins play in pregnancy wellness and early fetal development. She gave the women a kit that included prenatal vitamins (donated by Fairhaven Health) along with a brief, easy-to-understand 4×5 card listing the various vitamins and minerals vital for a healthy pregnancy and lactating period.  Since many of the women came in for an early pregnancy screening, they were able to receive the kit with the prenatal vitamins during a critical window of development in the earliest days and weeks of pregnancy.

Sadie Bazur-Leidy

Sadie worked at BirthNet, a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve maternity care for women of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, races, religions, sexual orientations, abilities, and socio-economic circumstances. Sadie compiled a document listing all of the prenatal professionals in the Capital District in New York State. BirthNet will publish the document in a print version and online version. The document will be a resource used by various practices to refer clients. In addition, Sadie shadowed several midwives in the region, attended prenatal visits and meetings, and spoke with mothers about their experiences with birth.

Mariah Blegen

Mariah worked in La Casona, a rural indigenous territory in Costa Rica that is home to the Ngöbe-Buglé people.  She worked with the local physician and two medical interns from the University of Costa Rica, and created a weeklong workshop for adolescent mothers in the territory.  The workshop was a part of the health district’s Madres Adolocentes program, which aims to decrease the rate of adolescent pregnancies by empowering young women in the community and providing education on family planning and sexual health.  The workshop Mariah put together combined group activities and informal talks to share information on family planning, pregnancy and birth. Workshop attendees were given an opportunity to reflect on their own opinions and ask questions. 

Mollie Hudson

Mollie continued her work in Shirati, Tanzania, a rural region of the country located on Lake Victoria. Her ultimate goal is to create a radio show in Shirati that provides information about reproductive/sexual and maternal health with a focus on HIV education and support for medical compliance.  The radio show will provide education to those in need and will help to de-stigmatize testing and important conversations regarding sexual health. During this trip Mollie conducted a formal needs assessment via surveys. She assessed the listening habits of people in the village, including how often people listen to the radio, what percentage of the village owns a radio, and what types of programs/stations people are inclined to listen to on the radio. Over 150 surveys regarding radio use in the village were completed. 

Derek Ochi

Derek worked at Open Arms in Minneapolis to develop and implement the Farm, Food and Nutrition program.  The goal of the program is to bring youth from the East Phillips Park neighborhood to Open Arms to give them hands-on farming experience including vegetable planting, harvesting and preparation. The program consists of monthly afterschool lessons, with each lesson focusing on a different aspect of farming, beginning with planting and culminating in a harvest festival in early summer. The program was developed in recognition of a lack of healthy food options in the area and the pervasive effect of advertisements by processed food manufactures that target minority youth at a rate several times that of their Caucasian counterparts.

2010 Projects

Ira Martapullo

Ira continued her work with the Red Cross in Durres, Albania, where she was involved with an HIV-AIDS Awareness Campaign.  She worked with a local design and printing company to create an informational brochure that the Red Cross uses in their presentations to schools and public offices and in training new volunteers.

Jessica Vaughn

Jessica worked at a Girls Center in Santa Ana, Costa Rica, whose mission is to “empower teenage girls in disadvantaged communities by providing education and lifestyle models pertaining to teenage pregnancy.” She designed new programming to raise awareness about opportunities available to young girls and to provide them with diverse tools to plan and achieve life goals.

Emily Vollbrecht

Emily worked with the Midwest AIDS Training Education Center through the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. She convened focus groups and then developed a brochure outlining HIV-specialized pharmacies and services in the Twin Cities for patients living with HIV/AIDS. Emily also traveled to Chicago to participate in a training workshop before meeting with the focus groups.

Sarah Ziegenhorn

Sarah continued her work with the AIDS Center in Durban, South Africa. She followed up on a project she started during her study abroad experience in spring 2010. She learned to cook Zulu dishes with her host family and tested recipes for a cookbook that would include nutritional information, especially for those with HIV/AIDS.