Out of the lab, off to Africa

This summer, Park’s senior thesis in ecology and evolutionary biology brought her to Senegal, where she studied the impact of dam construction on demographic, health and economic conditions in the surrounding villages.

“You can read a lot about health care, but once you actually get out into the villages and see how people are living every day, it gives you new perspective about how development is actually progressing there,” Park said.

Students such as Park who conducted research in Africa this summer found that despite the resources and connections that got them there, no amount of studying could fully prepare them for life in Africa.

Park made her way from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Switzerland, where she spent the first part of her summer research, to the Diama Dam in Senegal, where she researched the impact of the dam’s construction on villages that were relocated to make way for the project.

Though she had worked extensively with researchers in Switzerland to prepare for her survey research, she found that she needed to tailor her survey to local conditions upon arriving at the villages. “One of the problems was that there wasn’t much data available, so once I started talking to people there, I realized I had to change everything,” she said.

Fellow EEB major Adjani Peralta ’11 also conducted research in Africa, extending her time in Kenya after studying there through the EEB department in the spring. Peralta, who researched the relationship between birth seasonality and disease dynamics for her thesis, said she hopes that the results of her findings will point to possible improvements in the local vaccination and education programs.

Peralta said she found the logistics of her project to be the greatest obstacle. “Just because you’re ready to collect data doesn’t necessarily mean that you can,” she said. When she went to a local hospital to obtain data, she found that such a seemingly simple task required more labor than expected, as she had to comb through books of records and manually input all the data.

Like Peralta, Daniel Echelman ’11 was returning to Kenya for a second time this summer. He spent the summer of 2009 researching the role of street theater in encouraging healthy behaviors to prevent HIV/AIDS and to raise breast cancer awareness. This year, as an Adel Mahmoud Global Health Scholar, he sought to expand his outreach by examining issues of stigma and screening for breast and cervical cancer.

Support nonprofit student journalism. Donate to the ‘Prince.’ Donate now »

Echelman sought to examine the social factors that lead many Kenyan women not to seek treatment until advanced stages of cancer and to implement an awareness and screening campaign.

Through interviews with breast cancer patients and survivors, Echelman discovered an attitude toward breast cancer that differed greatly from that in the United States. The idea of going to a health center for cancer screening while feeling healthy was “counterintuitive” for some Kenyan women — and some of those diagnosed with cancer sought treatment from traditional healers.

The women faced fears of becoming “less of a woman” if they were to undergo a mastectomy as well as fears of unaffordable treatment costs and overwhelmed public facilities, Echelman said. He noted that one bias in his research came from his only speaking to women in clinics and hospitals, explaining, “I did not speak to the most stigmatized, the ones who never made it to these centers.”

Adel Mahmoud, a Wilson School and molecular biology professor who has interacted with Echelman through the Program in Global Health and Health Policy, said the project offered a different perspective from a conventional laboratory project.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“For the first time, he was faced with real-life situations,” Mahmoud said. “What he saw in Kenya, and the way he talks about it, is an experience that can never be obtained from a book.” Back on campus, Echelman is working with other students to address the range of challenges facing breast and cervical cancer patients in Kenya.

Mahmoud stressed the importance of obtaining real-world experience.

“My personal philosophy, as the students are thinking about their senior thesis, is that if they are interested in issues of health and disease in the developing world, real exposure is very valuable,” he explained.