About me
Three years ago I stood on the streets of downtown Chicago dressed in a pink teddy bear mascot costume. Beside me a wooden placard read, "Five strangers, one passion, Chicago to Uganda." The bear hug campaign was more than an effort to raise awareness about individuals affected by a twenty-one year civil war in Northern Uganda. It was my response to a documentary film entitled ‘Invisible Children’ that confronted me with a difficult decision: either I consciously ignore the reality of the crisis or I decide to act. That night I found Uganda on the map and decided to travel there.

I first went to Uganda three summers ago hoping to share real experiences with individuals I only knew from films, newspaper articles, and statistics. I worked as a research assistant in a study that investigated the spread of multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. My time was divided between working in the slums of Kampala and in the TB ward of Mulago Hospital. I saw poverty and illness, in addition to complexity and resiliency. I came to the conclusion that effective medicine begins by addressing the underlying causes of disease; in the case of Uganda these include economic disempowerment, gender inequality, lack of educational opportunities, and a failing infrastructure. Consequently, I've committed myself to the idea of social medicine, medicine for society and the individual. Through a career in medicine, I want to serve as a mediator between policymakers, academics and communities on an international and local scale.

In August 2007 I returned from my second trip to Uganda. After my first trip, I brought back more than a 100 rolls of film containing photos taken by youth living in the slums of Kampala. This past August I returned with thousands of pages of data, the results of a comprehensive needs assessment that my friends and I organized throughout the district of Lyantonde, a region in Southwest Uganda heavily affected by the consequences of HIV/AIDS. The assessment is setting the groundwork for a project I've begun in a rural community that focuses on the psycho-social well-being of children orphaned by AIDS. This organization entitled Project FOCUS, in collaboration with a local NGO, provides children with a safe place to express themselves through the creation of art in various media. Their work, created with assistance of artists from the US and Uganda, will be presented to the public in an effort to educate and inspire individuals to appreciate the humanity of this struggling community and to respond according to their own abilities, resources, and resolve. Three years ago I stood on the streets of downtown Chicago dressed in a pink teddy bear mascot costume. Beside me a wooden placard read, "Five strangers, one passion, Chicago to Uganda." The bear hug campaign was more than an effort to raise... (more)