Margo Hoyler

Marguerite Hoyler is a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School. Hoyler particularly interested in expanding and improving access to essential surgical care in low-resource settings. Between her third and fourth years of medical school, Hoyler spent a year as a researcher with the Harvard Program in Global Surgery and Social Change. In that capacity, she traveled to Rwanda to initiate a project assessing rates of surgical site infection in rural areas. In her spare time -- and while engaged in research -- Hoyler enjoys traveling and studying foreign languages.

Project: "Assessing Post-Operative Complications in Rural Rwanda"
January 6, 2014 - February 28, 2014
Butaro, Rwanda

 

What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
I am honored to receive the Kean Fellowship, and am grateful for the opportunity to continue to pursue my research project in Rwanda. I am particularly excited that the ASTMH has recognized surgical illness as an important object of study in tropical countries.

What do you anticipate learning?
The Kean Fellowship will enable me to return to Rwanda to study rates of surgical site infection (SSI) in rural areas, and ways in which SSI screening can be incorporated into the already robust community health worker system there.

What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
I am interested in barriers to essential surgical care in low- and middle-income countries, many of which are tropical. Although surgical diseases -- including traumatic injury, acute abdominal illness, birth defects and many cancers -- may not be the "typical" focus of tropical disease research, these conditions constitute a real health crisis in low-resource settings. I am committed to building surgical capacity in tropical countries to address surgical illness, and to providing basic surgical care to people in those countries.