Seven Clinical Trainees Begin Global Health Research in Africa as Fogarty and Pathway Fellows

A group of seven Duke clinical trainees will begin mentored global health research in Africa as part of two programs: the prestigious Fogarty Global Health Fellowship and the Duke Global Health Residency/Fellowship Pathway. The trainees represent a range of medical specialties, including infectious diseases, pediatrics, cardiology, internal medicine, oncology and obstetrics and gynecology – highlighting the diversity of interest in global health at Duke.

The newly named 2014-2015 Fogarty Global Health Fellows are Lindsay Boole, Dorothy Dow, Laura Lewandowski and Wilson Sugut. They will work in Africa on research projects related to sepsis, HIV and mental health, lupus and cardiovascular disease. Funded by the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health, the Fogarty Global Health Fellowship enables trainees to engage in a year-long mentored research project at an international training site. The program is led at Duke by the Hubert-Yeargan Center for Global Health and is part of the VECD Global Health Fellowship Consortium.

At Duke, The Global Health Residency/Fellowship Pathway announces three new trainees: Laura Musselwhite, Jana Halfon and Kristin Schroeder. They began the program in July, and will engage in a extended international experience conducting clinical work and a global health research project. The new class will focus their work on developing a cancer registry, and studying the burdens of maternal mortality and pediatric oncology in Africa.

Duke’s 2014-2015 Fogarty Global Health Fellowship Awardees

Lindsay Boole, MD, MPH
Resident, Internal Medicine and Global Health
Fellowship Site: Moi University, Kenya
Fellowship Project: Clinical Trial of an Algorithm for Management of Severe Sepsis in a Low-Resource Healthcare Setting in Kenya

Boole graduated fom Emory University with an MD/MPH degree with summa cum laude and Alpha Omega Alpha honors. During medical school, she conducted research in Haiti and Zambia, the latter of which was funded by an Infectious Disease Society of America Medical Scholars Award. She is currently an Internal Medicine resident in the Duke Global Health Residency and Fellowship Pathway. In residency, she was selected to serve as Assistant Chief Resident at Duke University Hospital, and has received Duke’s Snyderman Award for research in graduate medical education. She’ll study the management of sepsis in low-resource settings.

​Dorothy Dow, MD, MSc-GH
Fellow, Pediatric Infectious Diseases
Fellowship Site: Kilimanjaro Medical Centre, Tanzania
Fellowship Project: Establishing Mental Health Needs in HIV-Positive Adolescents in Tanzania

Dow is a Duke pediatric infectious diseases fellow and alumna of the Duke Master of Science in Global Health. Working at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre since 2011, Dow is conducting research related to pediatric HIV with a focus on adolescents and the impact of mental health on HIV outcomes. Dow looks forward to better understanding the mental health difficulties that these youth experience with the goal of creating an effective cognitive behavioral intervention that will benefit both their mental and physical health.

Laura Lewandowski, MD
Fellow, Pediatric Rheumatology & Global Health
Fellowship Site: University of Cape Town, South Africa
Fellowship Project: PULSE: Pediatric Update on Lupus in South Africa: Epidemiology and Management

Lewandowski completed her Pediatric Residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and her MD at Penn State. She is focusing her work in South Africa where she is exploring the burden of pediatric systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, which is an autoimmune disease that can lead to long-term chronic inflammation. As a result of her work over the past year, she found that pediatric SLE patients in Africa are younger and they have more severe cases. Lewandowski plans to explore the role of race in SLE severity and study how the disease can alter risk for HIV. Her work has received a Lupus Foundation of America Career Development Award.

Wilson Sugut, MBChB, MMed
Fellow, Cardiology, CVPD Centre of Excellence, Eldoret
Fellowship Site: Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Kenya
Fellowship Project: Echocardiographic and ECG findings among diabetic patients with and without peripheral artery disease (PAD) at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Eldoret

Sugut is a fellow at the Cardiovascular Pulmonary Disease Centre of Excellence in Eldoret. Sugut holds a bachelor’s degree in medicine and surgery from University of Nairobi, and a master’s degree in internal medicine from Moi University. His career goals are to spearhead research on cardiovascular disease in western Kenya while advancing the practice of cardiology in the referral hospital where he is currently working.  DGHI faculty member and cardiologist Jerry Bloomfield, also a past Fogarty fellow, has been influential in his decision to pursue research in cardiovascular diseases.

Global Health Residency/Fellowship Pathway Trainees, 2014-2015 Class

Laura Musselwhite, MD, MPH
Global Health Resident
Musselwhite begins her Global Health-Internal Medicine Residency track having completed two years of Internal Medicine Residency and her MD at Duke.  During medical school, she earned an MPH from Johns Hopkins University and a Young Investigator award for her work on HIV biomarkers during her NIH/NIAID Clinical Research Training Program.  Working under the Duke Global Cancer Initiative, Laura will conduct a needs assessment related to cancer registry development in Mwanza, Tanzania.

Jana Halfon, MD
Global Health Fellow
Halfon completed her Obstetrics & Gynecology Residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia and her MD at Yale.  During medical school, she was awarded a Doris Duke International fellowship to work in Accra, Ghana conducting research on the effect of placental malaria parasitemia on peripheral and placental HIV-1 RNA concentration in HIV-positive pregnant women.  As a Duke Global Health Fellow, Jana will explore opportunities to investigate and address maternal mortality in Kigali, Rwanda. 

Kristin Schroeder, MD, MPH
Global Health Fellow
Schroeder completed Pediatric Hematology-Oncology and Neuro-Oncology Fellowships at Duke, Pediatrics Residency at UNC Children’s Hospital, her MPH at West Virginia University and MD from Georgetown. She was awarded a travel grant from the Duke Global Health Institute to explore partnerships in neuro-oncology research in Uganda and examine the incidence of meningiomas. Working under the Duke Global Cancer Initiative, Kristin will establish a pilot project to improve the understanding of the pediatric oncology burden in Western Tanzania.