Etinosa Oghogho has a passion for helping people and a passion for public health. Those dual passions recently landed her an internship at the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva. 

“It was a great experience at the WHO, and I believe it has undoubtedly helped to bolster my career in global health and honed my research skills,” says Etinosa.

Etinosa, a native of Benin, Edo State, Nigeria, earned her bachelor’s degree in Microbiology from Covenant University in Nigeria. She also earned a Master of Public Health degree with a concentration in Community Health Education and Behavior from Georgia Southern University. Her research interests revolve around maternal and child health, global health, sexual and reproductive health, social determinants of health, and health disparities. Her dissertation research is centered on Vesico-Vagina Fistula (VVF) and its impact on the quality of life of affected women in Nigeria. The  goal of her research is to influence the development of culturally-sensitive programs and policies to prevent VVF in the country.

Etinosa first became interested in public health while working on her undergraduate degree. While taking public health courses, she began to develop stronger interests in public health because she could relate what she was learning to the real world. 

“I could practically relate to children and aged people dying because they were unaware that having a clean environment, using mosquito nets, or simply taking anti-malaria drugs could have prevented their ailments,” says Etinosa. 

Experiences at the University of Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostics Laboratory and the National Youth Service Corps program in Ekiti State, Nigeria, along with interactions with public health experts, expanded her knowledge about the public health field and strengthened her belief in health education, awareness, and promotion as the best form of preventive medicine. While at the WHO, Etinosa conducted research focused on making health systems stronger and on access to sexual and reproductive health services among women in low- and middle-income countries. 

When considering where to pursue doctoral studies, Etinosa considered factors such as quality of research, strength in maternal and child health, faculty commitment to minority student development, networking opportunities, and post-graduate employment prospects. FIU excelled at all of these factors. Receiving funding via a graduate assistantship award was also an important factor in choosing FIU. 

“As an international student from Nigeria, receiving the Graduate Assistantship award in addition to my family support truly influenced my coming to FIU,” says Etinosa, who is in the third year of her doctoral program. “After two years in the Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Department in the Stempel College of Public Health, I can confidently and joyfully say that I made the right decision. FIU is the perfect place for me.” 

Since her enrollment into the doctoral program in Fall 2017, Etinosa has participated in two medical mission trips to Haiti and Nigeria with multi-disciplinary teams of medical and healthcare professionals. In Haiti, the teams delivered a sexual and reproductive health education program to approximately 300 women and adolescent girls. In Nigeria, Etinosa helped provide access to free medical care to approximately 1800 people. 

“I am very passionate about helping others and deeply committed to international development,” Etinosa says. 

Etinosa’s passion for helping others also includes her own community. She volunteers as a trained HIV/AIDS and STI peer educator for the Florida Department of Health. She’s also a volunteer at the Miami Rescue Mission Cover Girls program, where she helps women fleeing from domestic violence, sexual assault, and homelessness.

After completing her doctoral degree, Etinosa will seek a post-doctoral fellowship position where she can continue her research on VVF. After her post-doctoral fellowship, she plans to set up a non-governmental organization with the mission of advocating for the health and well-being of Nigerian girls. 

“The NGO will focus on advocating for the educational rights of girls while providing sexual and reproductive health education, healthcare, and job training services,” Etinosa says.

“Tropical forests are the lungs of the planet,” says 3^rd-year biology doctoral student Aaron Hogan, explaining that tropical forests exchange the majority of atmospheric carbon dioxide and oxygen annually. It’s one of the many fascinating facts that drew Aaron to study tropical forests.

Aaron, a native of Breckenridge, Colorado, first became interested in biology, especially forests, as a teenager. “I saw the devastation that the mountain pine beetle caused in Colorado,” he says. “The lack of severe freezes allowed the pathogenic beetle to spread epidemically and cause massive die offs of Lodgepole pines.” Around the same time, Aaron took his first trip to Costa Rica and fell in love with the high levels of biodiversity in the tropics.

Aaron completed his undergraduate work at the University of Denver in Denver, Colorado, earning a B.Sc in Ecology and Biodiversity. He completed his master’s work at the University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras in San Juan, Puerto Rico, earning a M.Sc of Ciencias Ambientales (environmental sciences).

A graduate fellow with the US Department of Energy, Aaron is currently conducting research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee. His research interests center on tropical forests, their ecology, and how they will function as biological systems in the future. One area that he is particularly interested in is the morphology and functioning of tropical tree roots. This requires connecting root organ form to biological function and determining how that might be affected by climate change. At ORNL, Aaron, in conjunction with staff scientists at the lab, is examining how root respiration rates are affected by temperature and will aim to relate those physiological results to root form.

“That becomes labor intensive if you focus on the thousands of tree species present in tropical forests,” Aaron says. He has chosen to focus on one tree as a model, the Teak tree from tropical India and Southeast Asia.

Aaron chose FIU for his graduate studies because of the facilities and the many collaborating institutions that are doing cutting-edge research in the tropics. “In our department, we have great scientists working throughout the tropics on a wide variety of organisms, from sharks to seagrasses, from mangrove trees to tropical reptiles, and almost everything in between,” Aaron says. Collaborating organizations with a deep interest in tropical plant ecology and conservation include The Fairchild Garden, the Kampong, Montgomery Botanical Center, Miami-Dade County, the Everglades National Park and the Florida Coastal Everglades Long Term Ecological Research Program.

Once Aaron completes his doctoral work, he hopes to find employment that will allow him to pursue his scientific interests. He also wants to continue to provide understanding regarding the current and future ecology of tropical forests as the world continues to change.

Even though biological systems and engineering are two paths that seem to lead in different directions, Sana Nasim has always envisioned pursuing a career in the two fields. In Pakistan, where Sana was born and raised, she says the study of highly specialized engineering fields is uncommon. Even rarer are women in these fields. Sana’s aspirations remained with her, however, and she is now working towards a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering, a field that merges her two dream career paths. 

Sana, a 4^th-year doctoral student in FIU’s biomedical engineering program, moved from Pakistan to the United States with her family in 2008 to pursue better educational opportunities. After finishing high school, she began attending the New Jersey Institute of Technology, majoring in biomedical engineering and minoring in mathematics. It was at this point that she became passionate about the interdisciplinary aspect of biomedical engineering.

Sana initially came to FIU because of the NSF Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship, which covered her first two years of doctoral study. She cites the outstanding support group that accompanies the fellowship as an important factor in her decision. Sana will continue her biomedical engineering work with the support of a $60,000 grant funded by the Miami Heart Research Institute. 

The Miami Heart Research Institute, also known as the Florida Heart Research Foundation, is a non-profit organization whose mission is to stop heart disease through education and prevention. Sana’s grant, titled “Phenotypic and Functional Characterization of Neural Crest-derived Aortic Valve Interstitial Cells,” is renewable for an additional year and will enable Sana to perform interdisciplinary research. She will work towards understanding more about how neural crest-derived cells affect the aortic valve extracellular matrix. 

“This grant helps expand the understanding of the regulation and formation of elastin in the aortic valve,” Sana says. 

After completing her doctoral degree, Sana plans to pursue a post-doctoral position in an interdisciplinary lab where she can utilize her engineering and biomolecular skills. Eventually, she would like to work at NIH as a research scientist and teach on a part-time basis.

Beyond her scientific goals, Sana wants to encourage others to pursue knowledge and further their education. “I want to empower women to pursue higher education and take initiatives to question unanswered questions in the research realm as well as in our society,” she says. “I want to bring awareness from my being that you could be anything that you dream to become.”

Becoming a biochemist might seem like an unexpected next step for a helicopter mechanic, but for Leonardo Acuna, the first recipient of the UGS Veterans Fellowship, it makes perfect sense. “I decided to be a mechanic for biological systems, and for me, that means becoming a biochemist,” he says.

Born in Costa Rica, Leonardo moved to Miami before the age of 5. He began his undergraduate career at FSU but was unable to decide on a major. He could not justify paying FSU’s tuition while aimlessly taking classes, so he returned to Miami and finished his associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College. Shortly after, he joined the Marine Corps and hoped that time away from academia would give him time to narrow his interests. He spent the next 5 years fixing helicopters, rose through the ranks while gaining qualifications, and was deployed twice, leading his department for his second deployment. 

Leonardo enjoyed being a helicopter mechanic, and understanding how things operate has always fascinated him. “My time as a mechanic showed me I really enjoyed critically thinking to solve problems and using my hands,” Leonardo says. “So when my contract ran out, I enrolled at FIU as a biology undergraduate because biological science encompasses the same qualities I enjoyed about being a mechanic.” He graduated with a B.S. in Biological Sciences and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in December 2017 and decided to  pursue a PhD in Biochemistry at FIU. 

“I’ve had the honor to work with some amazing people at FIU, especially in Dr. (Manuel) Barbieri’s molecular cell biology lab, where I did undergraduate research and continue to work today,” Leonardo says. Leonardo also attended some open houses of several graduate programs at FIU and found the faculty to be very diverse, supportive and welcoming. He says he knew that he could learn a lot from them. 

Leonardo would eventually like to focus his research on the process of aging. “Although it may sound a bit foolish, I’d like to find a way to prevent it,” he says. One of the causes or contributors to aging are reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are also involved in cancer and many other diseases. Leonardo hopes that in his search for “immortality”, he can find ways to help others by furthering our understanding.

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. (Lidia) Kos and Dr. (Andrés) Gil for advocating for the creation of the Veterans Fellowship,” says Leonardo. He hopes to raise awareness of the new fellowship so that others may take advantage of the opportunity. Additionally, he would like to thank Dr. Barbieri and Dr. (Maria Luisa) Veisaga for supporting him in the lab and his graduate work. 

Chintan Bhatt, a doctoral student at the Robert Stempel College of Public Health and Social Work, was interviewed live on NPR Atlanta on July 19 for his research paper titled “Medicaid Expansion and Infant Mortality in the United States.”

Published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), Bhatt’s research examines the possible effects of Medicaid expansion on infant mortality rates by comparing infant mortality rate trends in states and territories by whether or not they accepted Medicaid expansion — stratifying by race and Hispanic ethnicity.

You can view Chintan’s interview below, which begins at 27:00 and ends at 36:50.

https://www.wabe.org/episode/closer-look-the-political-divide-with-emory-professor-alan-abramowitz-medicaid-expansion-and-infant-mortality-and-more/

Using data from the National Vital Statistics System, Bhatt discovered that infant mortality rates declined in both Medicaid expansion and non-Medicaid expansion states between 2010 and 2016. However, the decline in Medicaid expansion states proved to be 50 percent greater than in non-Medicaid expansion states.

Declines and differences in states affected by Medicaid expansion were greatest in African American infants. This drove the overall infant mortality rate difference by Medicaid expansion and reduced the infant mortality rate racial disparity in Medicaid expansion states.

“Publishing and disseminating these findings has been extremely important to me, as the future of medical insurance coverage in the nation is presently under review,” says Bhatt, whose research findings suggest that Medicaid expansion may be an important way to address longstanding disparities in U.S. infant mortality by race.

Millions of Americans were affected by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), which resulted in changes to health care benefits, coverage and related regulations. Since ACA was implemented in 2014, the uninsured rate decreased, specifically among women aged 18 to 64 years and in the 31 states and Washington, D.C., which accepted Medicaid expansion.

The most frequent users of medical services are pregnant women, mothers and infants, making them potentially the most likely beneficiaries of Medicaid expansion. The Medicaid program has financed coverage for low-income pregnant women for years, covering approximately 45 percent of U.S. births. Medicaid expansion states are required to cover 10 essential health benefits including pregnancy, maternity, pediatric care, chronic disease management, breastfeeding support, contraception, mental health, substance abuse screening and treatment and other behavioral health services.

Bhatt says, because of the dynamic maternal, infant and child health care services required by Medicaid expansion, it may be one of the most important ways in which the ACA may improve maternal and child health outcomes, such as infant mortality.

Bhatt is a medical graduate from India. He obtained his Master of Public Health (MHP) in epidemiology from Stempel College and is a currently a doctoral candidate in the college’s Department of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention.

This article previously appeared on FIU News and The Latest.