Rabina Bhandari and Alessandra Dutra
Second-year medical students Rabina Bhandari and Alessandra Dutra spent this past summer in India, funded by a scholarship from the UVA’s pan-university Center for Global Health Equity (CGHE). They assisted local researchers in gathering field data related to biomarkers to better understand the link between undernutrition and compromise of the immune system. The goal is to develop future interventions to prevent severe tuberculosis in undernourished communities at high risk for the disease.
“Tuberculosis is the most common worldwide killer from an infection,” Scott Heysell, MD, MPH, professor of medicine and director of UVA’s Center for Global Health Equity explained. “Basically, what undernutrition does is cause an immunodeficiency; so, in the same way that HIV causes AIDS, this is really a kind of nutritionally related AIDS.”
Bhandari and Dutra’s work included home healthcare visits and health camps, and assisting in establishing a foundation for subsequent interventions. Their efforts expand a growing opportunity for funding of interdisciplinary student-led research in India. In complementary work, recent PhD graduate in Engineering and CGHE scholar Benjamin Goffin led a project using publicly accessible NASA satellite data to map air pollution as determinants of tuberculosis transmission and disease severity.
Read more in UVA’s Envision magazine here: Shaping a Healthy Future – Give to UVA