Summer Projects Allow Students to Combat COVID-19, Racial Injustice
A Global Project
Zara Khan, M23, was looking forward to a summer doing global health research in Pakistan, where her family is from. When the project was canceled due to the pandemic, Khan was upset at first. Then she asked herself: “With my interest in global health, what can I do this summer that can be impactful for the pandemic as well?”
Khan turned to Navid Madani, founder of the Science and Health Education (SHE) Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Madani helped Khan formulate a Tisch grant proposal to study the pandemic’s impact on young people in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. “I wanted to focus on how to galvanize youths to be leaders in this problem and help governments mitigate the crisis,” Khan said.
Khan worked with the SHE Center to host a series of webinars on the pandemic’s effect on Middle Eastern youths, and another about its consequences for women in the MENA region. “It was a great learning experience, and I was able to interact with U.N. officials and people involved with the World Health Organization,” Khan said.
Khan also came across a study by John Hopkins and the World Health Organization predicting that the interruption in routine immunizations due to the pandemic would cause an additional 51,000 deaths among children under the age of 5 in the Middle East. “That was so alarming to me. I decided this was an area that needed to be addressed,” said Khan. She proceeded to do just that, overcoming language barriers and a lack of data to complete a literature review on immunizations in three Middle Eastern countries. “I hope people involved in governments in the MENA region are able to read this review and impact their policies to continue routine immunizations during this pandemic in an effort to decrease childhood mortality,” Khan said.
Khan hopes to do a global health rotation somewhere in the Middle East as a 4th year student and to stay involved with the SHE Center after graduating. “I think we accomplished a lot, but a lot of work still needs to be done,” she said.