Cervical cancer, a highly preventable and treatable disease, is disproportionately represented in low- and middle-income countries. This is largely due to inadequate access of screening and treatment services, lack of a trained health workforce, and implementation gaps in current prevention and treatment guidelines. In Kenya, these realities are all too apparent. Cervical cancer is the most frequent cancer among Kenyan women and national screening rates are currently less than 10%. Dr. Megan Huchko has partnered with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the Kenyan Ministry of Health for the past five years to develop community-based strategies to improve access to cervical cancer screening and linkage to treatment.

Project: In conjunction with Dr. Huchko’s study team, students will have the opportunity to join test and iteratively improve an educational intervention around HPV-screening and vaccination for women living in western Kenya. Our team is working in collaboration with the Kenya Ministry of Health to develop more effective community-based strategies to deliver HPV testing to women and increase vaccination rates among girls. One tool that we will be testing over the upcoming years is a mobile app, mSaada, designed to support screening strategies using self-collected HPV-testing offered by a cadre of lay health providers, community health volunteers. A group of Duke seniors developed a prototype app that was tested in the field by one of the DGHI Masters’ students. We have received an NIH grant to further develop this app and carry out larger-scale testing.

The SRT students would be working on developing evaluation tools for key stakeholders, community health volunteers and women who are in the target population for screening. They will also be developing tools to assist with assessment of mSaada’s impact on workflow, and any systems or facility-related barriers to use.

While prior teams have worked on different projects, you can read about the Center and students’ fieldwork on the CGRH website.

Please note that dates of the program are approximate.

Selection Criteria:

• Interest in global reproductive health
• Hardworking, flexible, and comfortable working with a team
• Prior experience with survey development, data analysis (qual and quant) or app development would be a plus!

PROJECT APPLICATION PROCESS

Students must fill out and submit a project application, CV and recent transcript to GH-Education@duke.edu by October 14, 2022 at 5pm ET. Applications open September 29. Students may apply to no more than two project opportunities and a separate application must be completed for each SRT project site.  Program interviews are scheduled to take place between October 31 and November 9. Any questions regarding the application, interview dates or general project information should be directed to Lysa MacKeen.