Margot Robinson
Margot Robinson graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts with degrees in Physics and Arabic Studies. In 2012, she joined the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle as a Post-Bachelor Fellow. At IHME, she helped design and roll out a household health survey in Saudi Arabia and worked on various aspects of the Global Burden of Disease Study, including vaccine coverage for children. She subsequently worked at the Laboratory for Systems Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Her work has been published in The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and other peer-reviewed journals. Now a first year medical student at Stanford University, Margot helps lead the school’s Organization for Global Health and hopes to use research and advocacy in the future to influence global health policy.
Project: "Evaluating Pediatric Tuberculosis Screening Strategies in a High-burden Community in South Africa"
June 15, 2017 - August 15, 2017
South Africa
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
It is a tremendous honor to receive the Kean Fellowship. The financial support that this program offers is making my work abroad possible and enriching my medical and research training. However, just as importantly, the program also connects us to a remarkable group of peers and future colleagues who share common interests and ideals. I am very grateful to have been given this opportunity and look forward to being a member of this community.
What do you anticipate learning?
Due to many diagnostic and reporting challenges, tuberculosis in young children has been understudied. Identifying screening approaches that offer better outcomes at lower cost is a critical step in helping policymakers formulate effective prevention and treatment programs. We aim to contribute to the growing body of research on targeted screening and intervention strategies for TB in infants in Western Cape, South Africa, where TB is a leading cause of death in children. I anticipate drawing from the research skills, cultural perspective and clinical knowledge gained from this experience throughout my career.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
The more I learn about tropical medicine, the more I recognize how tightly the epidemiology of these diseases is intertwined with issues of social inequity, healthcare access, education and poverty. I am motivated by the challenge of understanding these complex dimensions of disease and the critical need to develop effective interventions and policies that address them.