Chukka Anand

Chukka is a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. Originally from the Bay Area in northern California, he attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, where he studied American Culture Studies and Biochemistry. In college, he helped lead GlobeMed, a student-run organization focused on sustainable global health partnerships. He spent a summer working in Iganga, Uganda, on a youth HIV/AIDS peer-led health education program. After college, he worked at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program as a Housing Case Manager and during COVID-19 pandemic as a case manager in the Boston HOPE emergency shelter. In medical school, he has focused on ending immigrant detention, carceral abolition, and increasing healthcare access and reducing complications for people who use drugs. For his Kean Project, he will be working in Bangalore, India, to help design a digital curriculum for people with schizophrenia, substance-use and physical health co-morbidities to reduce excess mortality in those with serious mental illness. After his year in India, he anticipates applying to joint Internal Medicine/Pediatrics residency programs with a focus on addiction medicine and primary care. He volunteers with the Nashua Street Jail health education group and organizes with the Student Coalition on Addiction Medicine. Outside of school, he collects old vinyl records, shoots analog photography and enjoys biking through cities.

What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
The Kean Fellowship means that I can better learn about global models of care and what true community-led initiatives mean in practice. I have the opportunity, made possible by the ASTMH, to spend time embedded with community health workers who are working with some of the most marginalized people in society and understand what lessons we can bring back the U.S. in addressing the "tripledemic" of chronic disease, substance-use and behavioral health. Additionally, it is through the Kean Fellowship that I am able to culturally immerse myself in a country that I am from originally but have never lived in before.

What do you anticipate learning?
I anticipate learning the most about community models of care for those with psychiatric diseases in the Global South. My research project will primarily focus on curriculum development with an eye toward culturally, socially and politically relevant training on addressing schizophrenia and, thus, I hope to learn how to integrate in theoretical concepts into practical training.

What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
I'm most interested in the creativity required in tropical medicine and the ways that healthcare providers in low-resource settings have been resourceful to address complex issues. Additionally, I am excited to be a part of a new generation of thinkers in global medicine that puts equity, decolonization and social justice at the forefront. In the future, I hope to better understand how socialist economic systems broadly have addressed multiple, complex social issues.