The bio

Well it was definitely time for me to go on another adventure. Thought I would check out a different continent, one not so far away :)

Guatemala started as a means for me to complete some field work as part of my Master's of Public Health degree. Luckily for me, concentrating in International Health takes me to places like Quetzaltenango (aka Xela) to complete sed field work.

I will be working on nutrition research for a few months. The organization that I've linked up with is called CeSSIAM [http://www.inffoundation.org/research/cessiam.htm]. There are four main projects they are working on:

1.) Giardia...to see if a new rapid-test kit is as accurate/valid as the current test that takes a while to produce results
2.) Breastfeeding...to see if stress hormones present in breast milk contribute to stunting in children; and how gangliosides can help reduce those hormones/inflammatory response they cause.
3.) Anemia...to test a new machine that is non-invasive that looks at hemoglobin levels to determine if children have insufficient iron
4.) Obesity...to better understand why children that attend private schools in Xela are more likely to be obese than children that attend public schools

I, ironically, got assigned to the Giardia project. I was hoping to not revisit those memories of my time in Uganda, but so it goes. I will be working mostly with health centers to collect stool samples from children that come in with diarrhea. We then will have it tested at a lab, and if it turns out positive for Giardia, then we will conduct both the new (rapid) and the old (current gold-standard) tests to see if they have the same results.

Since I am planning on staying for a while, I hopefully will be able to work on multiple projects. So far, the tropical storms and volcano eruption have delayed a lot of the Giardia study. The project is just getting started and a lot of work is to be done. Stay tuned!