Student Fellows Program Spring 2023 Research Projects
Below is a list of the proposed research projects for GHI Spring 2023 Student Fellows. Each project indicates whether it requires remote work, in-person work, or a hybrid of remote and in-person work. Any in-person work is subject to the university's operating guidelines. More information about the program and how to apply is available on the GHI Student Fellows Program page.
For this section, please take a closer look at who can apply for each project.
Opportunities for Undergraduate, Graduate, Law, and Medical Students
A Partnership in Community and Child Health in Tanzania
Faculty Mentor: Kelley Anderson, Associate Professor, School of Nursing
Project Description: Schools play an important role in promoting the health and safety of children and adolescents by helping them to establish lifelong health patterns. School-based health assessments can identify needs of each child and lead to initiation of appropriate education and interventions to improve or maintain health. A panel of experts queried by the World Health Organization endorsed the following initiatives as essential school health goals: promotion of personal hygiene; provision of sexual and reproductive health education; promotion of health literacy; health education about nutrition; and promotion of oral health care. In resource-challenged and remote areas of the world, health care services are overburdened and unable to adequately provide school health services in their communities.
Georgetown University School of Nursing is partnering with the local Tanzanian health care providers in the rural Siha District of Tanzania to assist in conducting annual school child health screenings, in providing health education, and in developing referral systems for identified health care needs. The duties of the student will include literature review, development of guidelines, and report writing. This will be primarily remote work, with the potential for travel to Tanzania.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: The student must have an interest in developing strong research and writing skills in the substantive areas of child health, global health, and human rights.
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Access to Health Services for Indigenous and Migrant People in Thailand
Faculty Mentor: Laura Rozek, Professor, Medical Center
Project Description: Indigenous and migrant people have inadequate and unequal access to health services. This project is a mixed methods study of health and empowerment in indigenous and migrant women in northern Thailand, where there are real and perceived barriers to health access. At this time, the team - comprised of faculty at Georgetown, Chiang Mai University, and Chiang Rai University - will address context-specific access to cervical cancer screening and treatment as a mechanism for empowering women to achieve better health.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior Students
Skills Preferred: Quantitative and/or qualitative research experience is helpful
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Climate Change Related Stress in Kenya
Faculty Mentor: Emily Mendenhall, Professor, School of Foreign Service
Project Description: This project will investigate climate change-related stress in Eldoret, Kenya. We will be conducting literature review on water, food, and community stress in the context of climate events, and writing a grant proposal for future research. There is a possibility of joining the team in Eldoret during the summer of 2023 if the students can acquire internal funding from the fellowships office. The research planned will be exploratory and ethnographic work around climate related stress and how that affects both mental and physical health.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior, Graduate Students,
Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Strong research, writing, and interviewing skills
Work Modality: Remote work
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Conversations in Global Health: Global to Local
Faculty Mentor: John Monahan, Professor, School of Medicine
Project Description: Conversations in Global Health: Global to Local is a one-credit class centered around structured discussions, led by Professor Monahan, in which global health leaders discuss both their personal career journeys and what they see as the major health issues that will confront our world in the years ahead. The student fellow will provide technical and logistical support to the class, which will meet on select Tuesdays at 6:30 – 7:30 pm in the Berkley Center Conference Room (3307 M Street NW). Responsibilities will include ensuring student access to the conference room from the lobby, coordinating Zoom and recording, monitoring the Q&A on Zoom, and providing classroom support as needed to Professor Monahan.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students, Medical Students, Law Students
Skills Preferred: Experience with classroom management and technology
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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COVID-19 Delivery in Western North Carolina
Faculty Mentor: Jessica Kritz, Assistant Professor, School of Health
Project Description: The student fellow will conduct analysis on COVID-19 delivery in Madison County, a rural Appalachian county in Western North Carolina. Draft background and methods section of an academic article. Analyze qualitative data. Work with faculty to visualize data.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Excellent research and writing skills; Graphic design
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Demographic Dividend Prospects in Africa
Faculty Mentor: Vincent Turbat, Associate Professor, Department of Global Health
Project Description: Based on the population dynamics, and the dependency ratio, Prof. Turbat is trying to estimate the chances of selected African countries to benefit from a Demographic Dividend.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Global Health, Statistics, Health Economics
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Environmental Sustainability in Liberia
Faculty Mentor: Rosemary Sokas, Professor of Human Science, School of Health
Project Description: This project aims to create an ongoing relationship between Georgetown University and two Jesuit institutions in Liberia: the Holy Family Parish and Health Center in Caldwell Liberia, and the new Jesuit Xavier School. Unreliable electricity sources have prompted all three (parish, clinic, and school) to develop an interest in solar panels, and standing water damages buildings and creates a malaria problem, so environmental interventions appropriate to the region are welcome. This project aims to develop guidance and identify resources to assist the pastor, the parish council, the clinic health staff, and the school principal with ongoing development efforts.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students, Medical Students, Law Students
Skills Preferred: Interest in environmental sustainability, including solar panels and rain gardens
Work Modality: Remote work
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Financing Global Health
Faculty Mentor: Vincent Turbat, Associate Professor, Department of Global Health
Project Description: This research looks at two issues: 1) How global diseases are financed (such as HIV/AIDS or COVID-19); and 2) How selected countries are going to finance their health needs caused by their population dynamics (such as aging or migrating).
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Global Health, Statistics, Health Economics
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Global Catholic Health Systems
Faculty Mentor: Bette Jacobs, Professor, Department of Health Management and Policy, and Distinguished Scholar, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown Law Center
Project Description: This project, established in 2017, describes the history, contemporary challenges, and future directions of Catholic health services in countries with emerging economies. In partnership with the Bruno Kessler Foundation (FBK in Trento, Italy), the core team examines the mission, operations, and cultural integration of Catholic health delivery with particular focus on Bangladesh, India, and Kenya. Key themes have been technology, ethics, workforce and leadership training, and the context of nationalism, conflict, and dependable resources. The project seeks to cooperate with the Vatican Dicastery on Integral Human Development, WHO, and select initiatives that foster health and well-being for all people.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior Students, Law Students
Skills Preferred: Organizational skills to support an international working session at Georgetown University on Dec 12-13; Literature review and abstracts as resource material; Communication skills for outreach and follow up
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Health and Human Services Delivery Challenges
Faculty Mentor: Jessica Kritz, Assistant Professor, School of Health
Project Description: The student fellow will support preparation of a symposium issue of the Journal of Health and Human Services Administration. The symposium topic is harmonizing the evidence from public health and public administration around complex health and human services delivery challenges. Issues will likely include, among others, urban health/planning, network analysis, climate, migration, urbanization.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Excellent research and writing skills; Graphic design
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Health Misinformation on Social Media
Faculty Mentor: Leticia Bode, Associate Professor, Communication, Culture, and Technology Program
Project Description: Prof. Bode is currently working on a book about addressing health misinformation on social media. The book considers the problem of misinformation, evaluates a range of solutions that have been proposed, and spends most of the space addressing one solution - user correction of misinformation - in depth. The manuscript is drafted but needs a lot of work, so she is hoping a GHI fellow will help with improving it. This will sometimes be very big picture work - reading a chapter and pointing out things that are unclear, confusing, or missing - or sometimes very specific, like finding a particular citation or an example of a phenomenon.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: A good grasp of reading and writing, ability to switch between tasks quickly, willingness to adjust workflow as needed. Editing skills are a plus!
Work Modality: Remote work
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HIV Prevention, Testing, and Treatment Services
Faculty Mentor: Bryan Shaw, M&E Advisor/Associate Professor, Center for Global Health Practice and Impact (CGHPI)
Project Description: CGHPI is conducting a process evaluation of the LISTEN Process Model in Eswatini and Kenya. The LISTEN Process focuses first on prioritizing and meeting community needs - according to local communities - and then layering on HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services. CGHPI is conducting qualitative methods and would like to engage students in qualitative coding, interpretation, and reporting for the process evaluation. CGHPI will also be transitioning to an impact evaluation at the end of 2023 and will be developing a methodology for the impact evaluation of the LISTEN Process Model. CGHPI also has more quantitative-based projects in addition to the LISTEN Process Evaluation.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Interest in community-based research, knowledge of HIV and qualitative methods/coding preferred
Work Modality: Remote work
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Lung Vibroacoustics and Microbiome of Infants
Faculty Mentor: Pinaki Panigrahi, Professor, Department of Pediatrics
Project Description: Compared to eukaryotic cells, the human body harbors > 10 times bacteria that play an integral role in health and disease. The body generates low amplitude macro- and micro-mechanical, audible and inaudible vibro-acoustics that have not been studied. Changes in the sounds and vibrations produced by organs in the body probably precede chemical aberrations in blood. Precise signatures of such sounds when characterized can be used as a non-invasive and inexpensive tool for early diagnosis of disease conditions. Using hardware (iMPulse-TORTM hand held device) and data analytics platforms developed by Level-42 AI Inc., we are examining lung sounds of preterm infants to generate a signature pattern during their growth and development. Capitalizing on our work on microbiome, probiotics (Nature, PMID 28813414), and international collaborating sites (field and hospital) in India and Ghana, our team is engaged in laboratory and clinical research to identify unique dietary, environmental, and other exposures that shapes health during our lifespan (neonatal to geriatric).
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Laboratory/Microbiology, Biostatistics, Interest in global health
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Mental Health Stigma in Ghana
Faculty Mentor: Erica Coates, Assistant Professor, Medical Center
Project Description: The project is a collaboration between MedStar Georgetown University Hospital faculty and Africa’s Mental Health Matters (AMHM) – Ghana. We will engage in a collaborative process to (a) conduct semi-structured individual interviews, with 15 Ghanaians experiencing mental health difficulties, to inform the development of a workshop designed to address mental health stigma in Ghana; (b) co-create a grant-seeking plan to sustain our collaboration; and (c) host a workshop in Accra, Ghana designed to de-stigmatize mental health services utilization. We will interview 15 community members experiencing mental illness during Part 1 to inform the structure and specific content of the workshop sessions that participants may find most useful. We will identify and plan grant-writing activities to sustain our work in Part 2. During the workshop (Part 3), Ghanaian psychiatrists, psychologists, researchers, and Safe Circle members will lead sessions focused on normalizing psychological distress and coping with depression, anxiety, trauma, and substance use. A brief knowledge and satisfaction questionnaire will also be administered to participants at the workshop to assess pre/post mental health knowledge, perceptions, beliefs, and stigma, future support group content, and whether the workshop was successful in meeting the participants’ expectations. Results of this work will be used to apply for future funding to support stigma reduction programming in Ghana.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Experience conducting interviews with people living in Ghana highly preferable, background in psychology preferable
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Migrant Health Study in Bangladesh
Faculty Mentor: Jennifer Bouey, Associate Professor, Department of Global Health
Project Description: Data analysis on a migrant health study in Bangladesh; Literature review on digital health scale up in resource poor areas.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Strong writing skills and familiar with literature review
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Nursing and Midwifery Workforces in Zanzibar
Faculty Mentor: Christina Marea, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Project Description: Prof. Marea is in the early stages of developing an institutional partnership with a clinic and university in Zanzibar, with a focus on the development of the nursing and midwifery workforces. We will be developing a mini-symposium for late 2023 in which we will host a five-day event with simulation, pedagogy, and research components. Students can be involved in the conceptualization and planning of the event, as well as a small pilot research project to conduct a needs assessment with faculty in Zanzibar.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students, Law Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Strong organizational skills, experience with event planning and curriculum development. Experience with the Institutional Review Board (IRB) process and human subjects research in social and behavioral arenas. Excellent writing and communication skills. Demonstrated interest in global health, nursing, midwifery, and global health workforce development.
Work Modality: Remote work
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Postpartum Care in Washington, DC
Faculty Mentor: Christina Marea, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing
Project Description: Prof. Marea is preparing to begin enrolling participants in a study assessing the impact of a 12-month model of postpartum care delivered in a federally qualified health center in Washington, DC, with a focus on Black birthing people. The United States is a global outlier in how we provide postpartum care, and it's a large contributor to maternal mortality. Inspired by global models of postpartum care, we hope to improve outcomes for our structurally marginalized clients. Prof. Marea is seeking research assistants who have experience with IRBs, client recruitment, and informed consent procedures, with a clearly demonstrated interest in and connection with anti-racist practice and a reproductive justice framework. Other activities will include literature review and manuscript development.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate and Graduate Students, Law Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Experience with IRBs, demonstrated experience with the Black community in Washington, DC. Black and other students of color and femme-identifying candidates encouraged to apply. Students should have experience with IRBs, human subjects research, writing, literature review. Strong communication skills.
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Public Health Interventions and Infectious Diseases
Faculty Mentor: Margaret Baker, Associate Professor, Department of Global Health
Project Description: The student fellow will participate in a formative literature review on removing barriers to public health interventions for religious and ethnic minorities. Most of the literature on this topic is siloed within specific disease areas. This review is looking for common themes, preferred practices, and unaddressed challenges across disease areas and globally. The student fellow will be reading and extracting key information from selected journal articles and contributing to the thinking in this field.
Who Can Apply: Undergraduate Junior/Senior and Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Ability to read and extract information quickly and write clearly
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
Opportunities for Only Graduate and/or Medical and/or Law Students
Access to HIV Prevention Services in Eswatini
Faculty Mentor: Sharon Kibwana, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Practice and Impact (CGHPI)
Project Description: With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC/PEPFAR), CGHPI implemented a project seeking to improve access to HIV prevention and other services for adolescent girls and young women in Eswatini. We would like to publish findings from implementation of this project and seek a motivated fellow with strong writing skills to join the team that will work collaboratively to develop a manuscript.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Strong writing and literature review skills
Work Modality: Remote work
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Blantyre Prevention Strategy and HIV Prevention Programs
Faculty Mentor: Charles Holmes, Director, Center for Innovation in Global Health
Project Description: Launched in May 2020, the Blantyre Prevention Strategy (BPS) – an innovative, five-year, systems-focused approach to HIV prevention co-developed by Government of Malawi and Georgetown University Center for Innovation in Global Health (CIGH) experts – is on track to change the way future HIV prevention programs are designed and implemented. The strategy consortium is focused on building the capabilities needed at district level to detect and target risk, generate demand, effectively deliver current and emerging HIV prevention products and interventions, and support effective and sustained use of prevention products - including emerging long-acting products - by the end user. This opportunity offers multiple avenues to contribute, including support for health systems approaches, sustainability planning, and dissemination of results.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students, Law Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Inquisitive, strong writing skills, experience working in LMIC preferred but not required
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Costing Analysis of Community-Based Programs
Faculty Mentor: Martine Etienne-Mesubi, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Practice & Impact (CGHPI)
Project Description: CGHPI currently supports country programs in Botswana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Oceania, and Tanzania. These programs focus on HIV, TB, COVID-19, and other important challenges impacting optimal global health. A strategic focus for CGHPI in the coming months includes a costing analysis of the community-based programs across all the countries. This will allow us to quantify the key components of the community programs, measure cost efficiency and effectiveness, and the impact this has on health care outcomes. This information is crucial as it will help governments and global organizations alike understand the true costs of community-centered care and the resources needed to implement successful community-based programs.
CGHPI is looking for a student who would be interested in working on this project with guidance from our faculty. While we are looking to the interested student to work on this, we will provide continuous support every step of the way, with continued interaction with other faculty across CGHPI’s programs and countries. The student will be able to dialogue with other country programs to access information, data, and community program descriptions. The end result will include a manuscript which the student will have an opportunity to participate in developing and be a contributing author.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Important and necessary skills include: 1) Being able to apply an evidence-based approach to a problem; 2) Design, conduct, and interpret research analysis; 3) Integrate economic concepts with global health; and 4) Being able to translate theory to practical/field use (i.e. how to begin a cost/benefit analysis)
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Global Health Law
Faculty Mentor: Lawrence Gostin, Professor, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Georgetown Law Center
Project Description: The fellow would contribute to one or both of the following projects depending on Professor Gostin's needs at the time and the fellow's interests.
1) Professor Gostin is leading an O'Neill Institute team on a project, expected to begin at the start of 2023, in assisting WHO in creating accountability for the global health and care worker compact, which lays out state commitments and measures needed to safeguard the rights of health and care workers. States adopted the compact at the May 2022 World Health Assembly. The project involves collecting national laws and policies, as well as international agreements and tools, pertaining to the compact, assessing national laws and policies against ten indicators, and developing a national self-assessment tool. There may be research related to one or several of these components that the Fellow could support.
2) Professor Gostin is developing a second edition of Global Health Law, a book first published in 2014 that defined the field of global health law and has served as the leading reference on the subject. The second edition will be a major revision, now underway, with numerous new chapters and updates to chapters in the first edition to bring the book up to date. Prof. Gostin is collaborating with two other authors on this edition. The fellow would provide research support for this second edition and may have an opportunity to directly contribute to drafting material for the book.
Who Can Apply: Law Students
Skills Preferred: Strong research and writing skills will be important, along with an interest in global health issues and the potential of law to address them and to advance global health equity and justice.
Work Modality: Remote work
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Health Inequity Issues in Jordan
Faculty Mentor: Wu Zeng, Associate Professor, School of Health
Project Description: The purpose of this project is to examine health equity in using health care services and to estimate out-of-pocket health expenditure in Jordan. The study will use a household survey conducted in Jordan to estimate the magnitude of health inequality by type of health services and decompose health inequality into multiple components. Additionally, this study will also estimate total out-of-pocket health expenditure incurred in households and the incidence of catastrophic health spending. The study results will provide evidence for addressing health inequity issues in Jordan.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Strong statistical skills; Experience in using R or Stata; Experience in analyzing household survey is a plus
Work Modality: Remote work
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Health Services Improvement Outcomes Methodology
Faculty Mentor: Martine Etienne-Mesubi, Assistant Professor, Center for Global Health Practice & Impact (CGHPI)
Project Description: CGHPI currently supports country programs in Botswana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Oceania, and Tanzania. These programs focus on HIV, TB, COVID-19, and other important challenges impacting optimal global health. The Health Services Outcomes (HSO) Department with CGHPI is working with international and domestic programs to improve clinical service outcomes, patient/provider experiences, continuous quality improvement, and patient safety. HSO is looking for an interested and motivated student to conduct a systematic literature review on health services improvement outcomes methodology in low to middle income countries. The student would review studies defining and describing what has been done across countries to improve health service outcomes, compare and contrast these methodologies, and identify key gaps. The final deliverable would be a descriptive meta-analysis of these methodologies.
The student will work with Dr. Martine Etienne-Mesubi who leads the Health Services Outcomes portfolio at CGHPI. Dr. Etienne-Mesubi supports country programs internationally and globally to incorporate the components of the HSO strategy into their practice.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students
Skills Preferred: Student must be able to conduct a literature review, access journal publications, create comprehensive and cohesive summary descriptions, use excel, and work independently
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Intersectional Resiliences in HIV and Aging
Faculty Mentor: Michael Plankey, Professor, Department of Medicine
Project Description: Identification of intersectional psychosocial resiliencies and their impact on health outcomes among middle- and aging men living with HIV and men living without HIV in the US and to extend these findings to develop a data collection protocol to do the same for men living without HIV participating in the Lisbon MSM Cohort associated with the University of Porto Public Health Institute, Portugal. This work will be addressing how resiliences impact HIV prevention choices.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students, Medical Students
Skills Preferred: Perform medical literature review (or be willing to be trained), excellent writing skills to assist in writing research protocol with Porto investigator team. The literature review could be submitted to Georgetown Medical Review, GUMC medical and health student journal, for publication.
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Non-Communicable Diseases, Law, and Policy
Faculty Mentor: Andres Constantin, Assistant Director of Health Law Programs, O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center
Project Description: The student will have 1) one main ongoing project while 2) contributing to an additional project, as the need may arise.
Professor Constantin is developing the first edition of Industry Epidemics, a textbook that examines the role of law and policy in addressing modifiable risk factors that contribute to the rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, and the harmful use of alcohol. The book considers how law and policy shape contemporary legal discussions related to NCDs, such as tobacco plain packaging, alcohol sponsorship, childhood obesity, commercial speech and food labelling, and targeted marketing strategies. This will be the main project for the fellow, who will provide research support and may have an opportunity to directly contribute to drafting material for the book.
Additional work may include contributing to an ongoing project on the metaverse and global health law.
Who Can Apply: Law Students
Skills Preferred: Strong research and writing skills will be important, along with an interest in the potential of law to address public health challenges
Work Modality: Remote work
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Snakebite Injury in Eswatini
Faculty Mentor: Christian J. Hunter, Professor, Department of Medicine
Project Description: Snakebite injury is a major cause of injury in Southern Africa. In this project, the student will work with the investigator to help develop a protocol to measure the burden of snakebite injury in Eswatini. There will be opportunities to write up clinical case studies and publish a literature review.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students, Medical Students, Law Students
Skills Preferred: Literature review, enjoys writing, basic understanding of biostatistics
Work Modality: Remote and in-person work
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Social Entrepreneurship & Disability Inclusion
Faculty Mentor: Jun Han, Adjunct Professor, McCourt School of Public Policy
Project Description: This research will explore how social entrepreneurship and social finance (e.g. social bonds) can improve disability inclusion. It will start with literature review and landscape analysis, and then we will interview key informants of leading practitioners in the field. The student will assist with literature review and summary, interview outreach, database building and others.
Who Can Apply: Graduate Students, Medical Students, Law Students
Skills Preferred: Literature review, Excel
Work Modality: Remote work