We wish to congratulate our 2017 Graduate Certificate in Global Health recipients!
Learn more about the Graduate Certificate in Global Health
Class of 2017
Muhammad Zain Chauhan, MA, graduated in the Social Foundations of Health program from the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society (MHS). Before joining MHS, Zain received his B.A. in MHS with a minor in Neuroscience at Vanderbilt. As an undergraduate, Zain received the Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education for his research on the affects of waste water discharge on rural creeks. Zain’s thesis research is exploring the institutional and economic factors that contribute to the adoption of electronic medical record (EMR) systems in rural and urban dental clinics. He has applied this research in a global health setting by examining the factors that contribute to health IT adoption in resource-constrained settings, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Zain plans to go onto to medical school and work on the development of health IT systems catered to specialty practices in low resource settings.
Khaliungoo Ganbat, MA, was a masters student in development economics on a Fulbright Scholarship. When it comes to development, she believes that health becomes one of the major issues, but one that people think of less. She was interested to learn more about global health, which led her to take courses related to global health and to compete in the Global Health Case Competition (where her team won third place). Upon completion of her degree, she will go back to her home country, Mongolia, to continue to work with mining-impacted communities on poverty and development issues. Health and environment are the main issues for communities near mining projects and she hopes to use her knowledge she gained at Vanderbilt to serve these communities.
Kelsey Moore, MSN, as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) student, she was committed to strengthening her skills as a provider in global health settings. She competed in the Regional Finals of Hult Prize and in Emory University’s Global Health Case Competition in the Spring of 2016. In 2017, she served on the Programming Board for the Turner Family Center for Social Ventures and acted as the Campus Director for the Hult@Vanderbilt case competition. After graduation, she plans to put her clinical skills to work in a community health setting with the goal of connecting immigrant and refugee families to the care and resources they need.
Miller Morris, MA, was a masters student in the Social Foundations of Health. Her interests include the intersections between gender equity, social justice, and disease in low-resource settings. This summer, she will be in Bushbuckridge, South Africa conducting research with Drs. Carolyn Audet and Ryan Wagner on the experiences of people living with epilepsy and their caretakers. She will begin her MPH coursework at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Fall 2017.
Jennifer Lynn Neczypor, CNM, FNP, RN, MSN, is originally from California and graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing with a dual specialty in certified nurse-midwifery and family practice nursing. While at Vanderbilt, she served as the chairperson of the 2015-2016 Global Health Case Competition case-writing committee and also sat on the VIGH Student Advisory Council. As a recipient of the Nichols Humanitarian Fund Grant, she returned to her Peace Corps country of Vanuatu to provide nursing, family planning, and malaria prevention services in the aftermath of a devastating cyclone, and as a participant in Project Pyramid, she worked with the women of the Sibimbe sewing cooperative in rural Ecuador. Throughout her nurse-midwifery clinical rotations, she had the opportunity to explore the many implications of global health inequities for marginalized populations in the United States, including undocumented Spanish-speaking women in Nashville and Chicago, adolescent mothers, refugee women, and Saudi Arabian college students in rural Idaho. As a recipient of both the Frist Global Health Leaders Program grant and the American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) Jeanne Raisler International Award for Midwifery, she will be traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal after graduation where she will be partnering with the maternal-fetal health organization One Heart World-wide to train traditional birth attendants and Nepali student nurse-midwives. Jennifer’s long-term career goals include working as a nurse-midwife for Doctors Without Borders, developing effective, midwife-led solutions to the problem of malaria in pregnancy, and establishing a birth center in Vanuatu that integrates traditional birth customs, woman-centered care, and evidence-based practice.
Christine M. O’Brien, PhD, completed a certificate of global health while completing her Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. This certificate program was a wonderful experience and training opportunity, during which she conducted a practicum project in Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. The project aimed to improve early detection of gastric cancer using optical methods that can be incorporated into routine endoscopic gastric screening methods. She plans to begin a testing approach in Honduras this spring. After graduation, she plans to work as a post-doctoral researcher to gain new engineering and biophotonics skills. One day she hopes to become a principal investigator and focus on the development of point of care optical technologies for use in global health.
Rafal Sebastian Sobota, MD, PhD, MS, born and raised in Krakow, Poland, received two Bachelor’s degrees from the University of Chicago and entered the Vanderbilt Medical Scientist Training Program in 2008. He spent the 2011-12 academic year at the Malaria Research and Training Center in Bamako, Mali, supported by the Vanderbilt-administered NIH Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars Program. Rafal received a Ph.D. in Human Genetics in 2015 under Scott Williams, Ph.D. His dissertation evaluated the hypothesis that HIV-positive patients living in areas endemic for Mycobacterium tuberculosis who do not develop clinical tuberculosis are resistant, and that this protection has a genetic component. This and his other global health research has yielded 10 peer reviewed journal articles to date, and it was recognized with a Reviewers’ Choice award at the American Society of Human Genetics conference in 2016 and a plenary talk at a Vanderbilt-Emory-Cornell-Duke Consortium for Global Health Fellows conference in 2017. Rafal also received a Master of Science degree in Biostatistics Methods, focusing on global health, from Vanderbilt. While at Vanderbilt, he volunteered in Senegal, Kenya, and Nicaragua. He will pursue residency training in neurology at Northwestern University, with a long-term goal of a research career in genetics of neurological infectious disease.