Cohort 8 (2026) of our Global Health Scholarly Concentration

Claire, a Chapel Hill native and UNC–Chapel Hill graduate, first became interested in global health as a child after seeing her mother work in HIV research in Sub-Saharan Africa. This experience sparked her interest in learning about cultures, languages, and global politics, which led her to major in Global Studies with a concentration in African Studies. During her undergraduate years, she worked as a research assistant at the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, contributing to COVID-19 prevention and treatment trials. Through this work, she became more interested in how infectious disease research translates into patient care and public health practice.

Following graduation, Claire moved to Lilongwe, Malawi, where she spent two years as a research intern with UNC Project Malawi. She worked at a regional district hospital in the STI clinic on clinical trials focused on HIV PrEP integration and antimicrobial resistance in gonorrhea and also contributed to a study examining aspiration risk in infants with severe pneumonia. After her time in Malawi, she moved to Popayán, Colombia, where she spent nine months teaching English at a soccer academy.

Prior to beginning medical school, Emma took two gap years to participate in the MedServe Fellowship, an AmeriCorps program in primary care. Through her roles as a medical assistant and health coach, she helped care for underserved patient populations in Eastern North Carolina. During this time, she contributed to multiple quality improvement initiatives, including a lifestyle hypertension clinic and projects aimed at improving diagnostic documentation to support sustainable, team-based care.

Through the Global Health Scholarly Concentration, Emma looks forward to learning from and contributing to healthcare systems around the world. Training in global health will prepare her to care for patients not only in state-of-the art medical facilities but also in low-resource settings, expanding her creativity and ability to think outside the box. What she most admires about this field is its commitment to those who do not otherwise have the means to access healthcare. She values how global health emphasizes providing care to these populations while respecting the culture, customs, and traditions that patients hold dear. As a proud member of CAMPOS at UNC, Emma hopes to care for Spanish-speaking patients throughout the globe and help fulfill the need for more Spanish-speaking medical providers in the United States.

This work inspired her to pursue further education in public health, so that she could be more prepared to address structural health issues in addition to the individual clinical needs of patients. She received her Master of Science in Public Health, Microbiology, and Emerging Infectious Disease from George Washington University, where she gained a greater understanding of the immense healthcare gaps globally. Here, she developed skills in epidemiology, disease surveillance, public health study design, and implementation of community-centered interventions addressing upstream causes of disease.

During her masters, Danielle also developed strong research interests in immunology and cancer therapy. She worked for two years in cancer immunotherapy research at the George Washington Cancer Center, focusing on engineering and optimizing T-cell therapies for glioblastoma using autologous patient samples, and seeking to make them more effective, efficient, and accessible. This work ignited her passion for harnessing the immune system to create more effective personalized therapies and make such treatments accessible on a global scale. She hopes to work to ensure scientific advancements can be equitably accessed—not just in high-resource countries but across low- and middle-income settings as well.

Through the Global Health Scholarly Concentration, Danielle hopes to deepen her understanding of culturally grounded approaches to care delivery, gain skills in developing scalable interventions, and contribute to projects that improve health equity both locally and worldwide. In the future, Danielle hopes to help shape healthcare systems that empower communities, strengthen global capacity, and expand access to lifesaving treatments, including emerging immunotherapies that are often limited to high-resource settings.

Years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sanya took a gap semester from undergrad to work full-time on North Carolina’s Vaccination Taskforce. The roles she embodied during this time – a speaker, advocate, creator, strategist, and, above all, community member – revealed to her the beauty and privilege of working in public health. She strove to serve her state by hosting public vaccine forums, educating state leaders, and drafting statewide initiatives for unhoused and homebound individuals.