Hagerman Wins Global Health Week Best Poster Award

Amanda Hagerman, MPH candidate ’16, received the award for top student poster during Washington University’s Global Health Week. Hagerman’s poster described her finding on vitamin A supplementation in Kenya.

She went to Kenya for her practicum this past summer and worked in a program supported by Helen Keller International, which wanted to see how early childhood development centers were doing at providing children with the vitamin supplements.

Hagerman created six survey tools to interview people at various levels in the health system. She found that community health volunteers, who were supposed to be only mobilizing the community, were administering the vitamins and collecting data. But because they were unpaid, they lacked motivation.

“If we could empower them with more support and training, we could really help the system,” said Hagerman, who worked as a nutritionist before joining the Brown School.

Her poster award came at the symposium for Global Health Week, Sept. 20-25. The week culminated with a student-faculty dinner coordinated by Biva Rajbhandari, MSW/MPH candidate ’17.

The dinner brought together about 60 faculty and students from the Brown School and the School of Medicine. “Everyone got to interact with each other,” Rajbhandari said. “I thought it was very helpful.”

Global Health Week was organized by undergraduates Maria Ruiz and Nneka Molokwu, with support from the Office of the Provost and the Brown School.

“There are a multiplicity of global health endeavors on campus,” said Ruiz, an anthropology major. “We wanted to bring a lot of those people into the same room.”