Erica Ludi
Erica Ludi is a fourth year medical student studying at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She grew up in Roswell, Georgia with her parents and sister. She attended the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, majoring in Psychology and Spanish and minoring in Chemistry. After college, she spent two years at the NIH doing mental health research. Her work focused on suicide screening and psychiatric health of medical and surgical patients. During her time in medical school, she has decided to pursue a career in surgery. As a Kean Fellow, she pursued a 2-month research project evaluating and surveying trauma within four Emergency Departments around Haiti. She hopes to continue her work internationally and is considering future fellowships in global surgery, trauma surgery or pediatric surgery.
Project: "A Multi-Site Injury Surveillance Pilot Project in Haiti"
July 1, 2015 - September 14, 2015
Haiti
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
Receiving this scholarship was very special. A lot of hard work went into the planning of our trauma surveillance project in Haiti. Having the ASTMH recognize our project as worthy of receiving this award made all the effort worth it. I confidently went forward with a well-supported project.
What do you anticipate learning?
Having the support to travel around to four different cities in Haiti implementing a new trauma surveillance logbook has helped me confirm that I would like global health to be a component of my future practice as a physician. My exposure to administrators, doctors, nurses and a completely different healthcare system taught me an incredible amount. I hope to contribute in a medical or research capacity again soon.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
I've always been interested in finding an area of need, whether it be related to community service, research or medicine, and putting in the work to make a meaningful contribution. Tropical medicine and global health are ever-expanding with non-communicable diseases creating a heavy burden in many low and middle income countries. I have an interest in addressing trauma and injury prevention and management. I am glad that I conducted research in Haiti this summer, and I plan to continue to incorporate international work into my career in the future.