Daniel Hodson
Daniel is a medical student at the Yale School of Medicine (Class of 2021) where he remains interested in translational research and global health care delivery. Prior to medical school, he served 54 months in the Peace Corps in Niger and Senegal and worked as a research assistant for the Heart Failure Team at the Yale School of Medicine. Daniel graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, attended the Global Health Delivery Intensive at the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed the post-baccalaureate Premedical Program at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. Outside of school, Daniel enjoys running through East Rock Park in New Haven.
Project: "Descriptive molecular-based epidemiological study of Plasmodium malariae (Pm) infection across rural and urban sites in southern Cameroon"
6/20/2018 - 8/22/2018
Cameroon
What does the Kean Fellowship mean to you?
Using the summer between first and second year to return to sub-Saharan Africa to engage in formal malaria research was a major goal of mine when I was applying to medical school. The Kean Fellowship goes a long way toward supporting this research, and it cannot be overemphasized what a great confidence booster it has been for a young, student physician-scientist such as myself. Finally, a close friend and mentor is a prior recipient of the Kean Fellowship, and it is a real honor to get to follow in her footsteps.
What do you anticipate learning?
To engender social justice through improving healthcare delivery for vulnerable populations remains my broad career aspiration. In the long term, I envision a career balancing clinical practice with clinical research, with a focus on underserved populations internationally and domestically. To help achieve these goals, I volunteer with the patient navigator program and student-run free clinic at Yale School of Medicine to gain clinical experience. This research project in Cameroon will allow me to integrate prior clinical research and community outreach experiences into the first formal research project of my career while directly applying prior lessons learned from project implementation in resource limited settings. This summer I hope to improve my French language skills and to become comfortable working within a clinical setting such as those in which we will work in Douala, Cameroon.
What interests you about tropical medicine and what problems are you interested in solving?
During my previous time abroad, my friends, collaborators and mentors across southern Senegal inspired my interest in infectious disease, tropical medicine and global health. Our health district staff in Médina Yoro Foulah, for example, exemplified the qualities I found at every level of our district: extreme intelligence with a keen sense of the daily realities and practical considerations of their catchment area; passionate motivation and willingness to make personal sacrifices for their communities; resilience—ever adaptable in the face of logistical obstacles well outside the normal range of American experiences; and humility with a penchant for smiles and laughter. Some of the most inspiring moments of my time abroad were traveling with these individuals to supervise mass treatment campaigns for neglected tropical diseases and in midnight meetings to discuss routine vaccination data or new crises, such as the Ebola outbreak. It was during these times that I felt I was doing what I was called to do and surrounded by a group of people with whom I was called to work. I strive to use tropical medicine as a way to advocate for social justice for the underserved.