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OHIO medical students sweep
international research contest
Top
three prize winners of the American
Osteopathic Association annual student
international medical research contest
will address seminar attendees
Oct. 27, 2008
Three Ohio University
Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine
students, Catalina Soto, OMS II,
Kimberly
Jackson, OMS III, and Amy Zidron, Ph.D., OMS III, captured
first through third places,
respectively, in the pre-event abstract
contest for the AOA’s Bureau on
International Osteopathic Medical
Education and Affairs (BIOMEA) 10th
Annual International Seminar, “American
Osteopathic Medicine: Establishing
International Freedom.”
They
each made 20-minute presentation
to BIOMEA attendees on October 26. This
year’s seminar took place at the Sands
Convention Center in Las Vegas as part
of the 113th AOA Convention
and
Scientific Seminar over the weekend.
Soto’s
first-place project, “Prevalence of lead
poisoning and lead-induced anemia among
children from Soyapango, San Salvador,”
developed out of her interest in
international medicine. A native of
Columbia, Soto said the project was a
way to serve a Latino population. “I definitely
have a deep connection to my roots and
had always wanted to give back to my
people,” she said.
Classmate Mirna Martinez, OMS III, suggested the topic
to Soto, who began looking into it. “As
I did more and more research on the
topic,
I got really excited about,” she
said. “It was extremely challenging to
pick the perfect topic that could be
‘easily’ implemented in a third world
country,” Soto explained.
Soto
joined other OU-HCOM students who were
traveling to El Salvador
to work with
health care workers in inner city
clinics and village “brigades.” The
medical students were part of work by
the Center for the Complete Development
of Children and Their Families (CEDEINFA),
a non-profit effort that serves
Salvadoran children living in
impoverished communities.
While
there, she interviewed and tested more
than 120 children during a two-day
period, after walking door-to-door in
the poor San Salvadorian neighborhood of
Soyapango to seek parental permission
for the project.
Soto
said she was warmly welcomed into San
Salvadoran homes and often offered
refreshments. “It reminded me of home.
I’m used to that kind of treatment
because that is what it is like in my
country,” she said.
Soto
anticipated that as many as 20 percent
of the children tested would show
exposure to lead, primarily because of
the industrial nature of the community
and the poor living conditions. Instead,
only about five percent tested positive
to lead exposure. Soto hypothesized that
with little motor traffic in the
community and dwellings made of brick
and mortar, lead was not prevalent in
significant amounts in the immediate
environment.
“I felt
that by developing this project I was
contributing to a good cause, since lead
poisoning has many severe medical
implications,” Soto said. “I became very
intrigued as to how to find out
if lead poisoning is an environmental
issue in San Salvador.”
Soto
received $5,000 to conduct the research
from the Centers for Osteopathic
Research and Education (CORE) Research
Office. CORE is OU-COM’s statewide
consortium of teaching hospitals.
“We saw
the passion of her presentation and the
motivation to carry the project
forward,” said Grace Brannon, director
of the CORE research committee, on why
they chose to fund Soto’s project. “You
need that in research.”
BIOMEA featured a poster session on
student training, volunteer work and
research related to international
medicine.
All
three of the OU-HCOM students’ winning
posters were displayed at the BIOMEA
seminar and at the AOA convention for
the duration of the national gathering
of osteopathic physicians, educators and
students.
Jackson, second-place BIOMEA award
winner for the second year in a row,
presented “Socioeconomic status
contributes to a nutrition transition in
Rural Kenya from 2005 to 2007.”
“Last
year, I was the only OU-HCOM student at
the international seminar. This is
awesome,” Jackson, a third-year medical
student, said of the awards. “I am so
proud of how OU-HCOM is increasing
involvement in research. RSAF (the
Research and Scholarly Advancement
Fellowship) and other research programs
at OU-HCOM have prepared us well.”
Zidron,
also a third-year student, took third
place with her Kenya-focused research,
“The impact of orphanhood on Luo
children.” Zidron also participated in
the seminar in 2004 as a Ph.D. student.
OU-HCOM’s
sweep of the BIOMEA research contest
illustrates a growing trend demonstrated
by the college’s 2008 Research Day, an
annual event that boasted a
record-breaking 61 research posters by
students and faculty this year.
According to John Schriner, Ph.D., director of admissions, this pattern may
indicate a national trend of earlier
research exposure, but it certainly
reflects the priorities of OU-HCOM.
“I am
noticing that our applicants have a lot
more research background, and that is
absolutely something we value during our
admissions process,” Schriner said.
“We’re always interested in students who
can add to the synergy of scholarly
activity here at the college.”
Gillian
Ice, Ph.D., associate professor of
social medicine, said OU-HCOM’s
international programming, compared to
other osteopathic medical schools, has
attracted attention at the BIOMEA
seminar in recent years. “We’re pretty up
there as a program. I was really
impressed with how well
our students did this year."
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