Student Gains Research Experience and Expanded View of Global Health

Helen Wu Li (right) is spending the year working with the AMPATH program in Kenya as a Doris Duke Fellow.

Helen Wu Li, a former Slemenda Scholar and third-year medical student, is spending this year with the AMPATH program in Kenya as a Doris Duke Fellow. Her research involves assessing the need for palliative care among surgical patients, but her experiences are also expanding her view of global health and the impact she can have in the future.

“In my time abroad, one of the biggest ideas that has struck me is that many global health issues can be found in our own backyards as well,” Li said. “Poverty, illiteracy, inability to access health care, cultural distrust of the health care system, violence and more affect many areas in the United States as well. Therefore, I believe that there are many global health concepts that can be translated to the states, and vice versa as well. My ideal career in the future would be to marry these two fields together. I’d like to build a transnational view of health care.”

IU School of Medicine profiled Helen’s experiences in a recent article.