Chelsea McCullough
Chelsea was born in Vancouver, Canada where she remained through her undergraduate education at the University of Victoria, earning a B.S. in Microbiology and Chemistry. After university, Chelsea traveled to Europe and East Africa for two years where she received her first taste of tropical medicine and global health. She then worked as a clinical laboratory assistant at the BC Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDS where she had the opportunity to observe the intersection between clinical medicine, basic science, and epidemiology.
Upon matriculation at Emory University School of Medicine, Chelsea immediately became involved in Emory’s chapter of Project Medishare, a non-profit organization based in Haiti. She was a member of their short-term surgical trip to Haiti before going on to become trip leader and president of the organization. In 2013, Chelsea took a year off of medical school to obtain her Master’s of Public Health with a focus in Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. While there, she continued her work on a trauma capacity assessment project in Haiti that included visiting health care facilities in 9 out of Haiti’s 10 national departments. Currently, Chelsea is preparing to graduate medical school and begin her residency in Emergency Medicine. She plans to continue her involvement in global health and tropical medicine throughout her career, particularly in the areas of international emergency care and pre-hospital systems.
Project: "Trauma Capacity Assessment of Haiti’s Ten Departments with Identification of Candidate Regional Trauma Centers"
June 1, 2014 - July 6, 2014
Thomonde and Port-au-Prince, Haiti
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
I am honored to be receiving the Kean Fellowship. It is incredibly inspiring to know that my work is supported by the larger global health and tropical medicine community. It provides further motivation to push through the challenges inherent to any research project.
What do you anticipate learning?
The Kean Fellowship allows me to see my project through to its fullest extent from design to implementation to data analysis, and hopefully to further research. Seeing a project through these phases is an invaluable experience at this point in my career, and will likely have a large impact on my career development going forward.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
Currently, I am interested in several aspects of global health including sustainable program implementation in a variety of health care fields. My current project has developed my interest in international emergency care systems, specifically in pre-hospital systems and emergency trauma care. As a future Emergency Medicine physician, it is likely that my work in this area will continue as my expertise in the field continues to build.