Nahida Chakhtoura (center) with Family Health Ministries research partners Nicole Tinfo (left) and Missy Owen (right)
Published November 10, 2015 under Alumni Stories
Nahida Chakhtoura, who completed a Master of Science in Global Health (MSc-GH) at DGHI in 2012, now serves as a medical officer in the Maternal and Pediatric Infectious Disease Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Chakhtoura came to DGHI having already completed a medical degree. She’d been working in an academic obstetrics/gynecology practice before deciding to make a mid-career transition. Her work with NGOs in Peru and Haiti gave her a window into the many health challenges that face women globally. These experiences prompted Chakhtoura to pursue an MSc-GH in order to develop a foundation and better understanding of how she could become involved in addressing women’s health issues on a global scale.
While at DGHI, Chakhtoura conducted research in Haiti. Working with associate global health professor David Walmer at Family Health Ministries, her research involved interviewing women about their knowledge and access to family planning services and birth spacing. Chakhtoura recalls that the women were very willing to participate in the research and were open and forthcoming, even about intimate details of their lives.
Through her experiences in Haiti, Chakhtoura learned how Haitian parents made incredible sacrifices in sending their children abroad to receive medical care. She specifically remembers a young boy she met with a congenital heart defect who was being sent to the United States without his parents for surgery. Chakhtoura says she carries this memory with her “as a reminder of the challenges that women and families have to face on a daily basis in countries that don’t have access to the level and quality of health care that we are privileged to have.”
The examples of resilience and strength that Chakhtoura encountered during her fieldwork experience still inspire her today. At the NIH, she conducts and facilitates international research on maternal and pediatric infectious diseases.
In addition to her memorable fieldwork experience, Chakhtoura has found the epidemiology and methods coursework she took at DGHI to be particularly valuable—every day, she says, she applies what she learned in these courses to her work.
Along with Duke faculty members Walmer and Joel Boggan and other collaborators, Chakhtoura co-authored an article, "Vaginal Self-Sampling for Human Papillomavirus Infection as a Primary Cervical Cancer Screening Tool in a Haitian Population," which was published this month in Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
