Global Health Award Winners’ Projects Announced

By Matt Kelly, University Communications

Excerpted from UVA Today story "Global Health Award Winners’ Projects Address Water, Environmental Issues"

57 University of Virginia students will use Center for Global Health scholarships this summer to address public health problems with local partners around the globe. The UVA Center for Global Health’s University Scholar Awards, evaluated and awarded by an interdisciplinary committee, fund projects up to $5,000 for an individual and $15,000 for a group. This year, the center has funded 27 projects in 13 countries.

Five projects are led by UVA Engineers:

• Onyedikachi Aligbe of Lagos State, Nigeria, a first-year medical student; Navya Annapareddy of Haymarket, a first-year biomedical engineering student; and Sarah Hour of Lynchburg, a first-year medical student, who will work in Rwanda analyzing the medical history of pregnant women with heart disease who are referred to the University of Rwanda-allied hospitals. Additionally, they will identify the effects of cardiac disease during pregnancy on adverse fetal and neonatal outcomes.

•  Merly Konathapally of Virginia Beach, a second-year biochemistry major, and Olivia Jones of Lorton, a third-year biomedical engineering major, who will further analyze the long-term impact of the PureMadi point-of-use water technology intervention, examining the environmental water quality and surveying the existing household water storage to estimate the process’s effects on the health of children in Limpopo, South Africa.

• Cameron Haddad of Tucker, Georgia, a third-year economics major, and Kamwoo Lee of Seoul, South Korea, a Ph.D. candidate in systems and information engineering, who will examine behavior of the traditionally religious or those with dual beliefs and their interaction with the health system in Limpopo, South Africa.

• Caroline Shermoen of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, a fourth-year biomedical engineering major, and Carolina Gomez Grimaldi of Newport News, a fourth-year biology major, who will seek to identify barriers keeping low- to middle-income, underserved women in Peru from proper access to breast and cervical cancer interventions.

•  Diana Wilson of Clayton, Delaware, a fourth-year sociology and women’s studies double-major; Maame Esi Eghan of Lorton, a second-year student; and Ernest Addy-Nettey of Dumfries, a second-year computer science major, who will provide 10 college women at the University of Ghana, Legon, with skills in finance or technology, mentorship and leadership development to prepare them for internships at top firms in Ghana.

Read the complete story HERE.