Isabelle Bernard

Isabelle is a third-year medical student at the University of Alberta in Canada. She graduated from the University of Alberta in 2021 with a BSc with Honors in Immunology and Infection and a Certificate in Biomedical Research. She has been involved in her medical school, serving as a President of the French in Practice Club and completing an MD with Special Training in Research (MD-STIR) to supplement her MD studies with a 24-week research program. She has a keen interest in the translation of infectious diseases research to clinical practice. Isabelle plans to pursue a career in internal medicine with a focus in infectious diseases, as well as a PhD through the Clinician Investigator Program during residency. Her goal is to translate her research to clinical applications in both low-middle income and high-income countries. Outside of school, she enjoys traveling, bouldering and hiking in the beautiful Albertan Rocky Mountains.

What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
I feel grateful and honored to be a recipient of the Benjamin H. Kean Fellowship. The Kean Fellowship allows me to develop my clinical interests in an established training site in Uganda, expand my professional network in a community with a shared interest in global health, and apply lessons learned from the management of tropical illnesses in resource-limited settings to clinical work in Canada. This experience will be invaluable to my career goal of translating infectious diseases research to clinical applications in high-income and resource-limited settings.

What do you anticipate learning?
I spent a month in Kambuga, Uganda, completing a structured clinical elective focused on childhood malaria. During this time, clinical and academic activities rapidly increased my knowledge on the management of uncomplicated and severe malaria, as well as several other tropical illnesses that presented at the pediatric ward. I worked closely with Dr. Michael Hawkes (Canadian preceptor, Infectious Diseases specialist) and under the supervision of Dr. Daniel Kasudha (Ugandan preceptor) as well as the wonderful staff at Kambuga Hospital. This allowed me to see firsthand how cultural differences and resource limitations could impact medical management—which will be an essential consideration when fostering future international collaborations in global health. This experience provided an opportunity for clinical exposure to global health in addition to my ongoing infectious diseases research.

What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
Tropical medicine is a unique interdisciplinary branch of medicine addressing health inequities, the importance of bidirectional learning, and integrating translational research to better health outcomes. My early interest in tropical medicine stems from my grandfather, who dedicated his career as a physician to global health work in Southeast Asia. He emphasized the importance of addressing global inequities as a determinant of health, which I then realized when observing the disparities in access to medical care in the Bunun Indigenous community during a volunteer project in Eastern Taiwan in 2018. I became interested in exploring social determinants of health in medicine. This interest merged with my passion in infectious diseases through my research projects in infectious diseases. Through my projects, I learned that clinical investigations could be applied to improving health outcomes in my community and in other settings globally. In all, I am interested in tropical medicine because it gives me the unique opportunity to learn from collaborators in a resource-limited setting and apply lessons toward my future career.