These SPH scholarships and fellowships are made possible by generous donations from friends and alumni. If you are interested in learning more and/or contributing, please contact Megan Ingram, mkingram@uw.edu.
Grayston-Day Fellowship
Kim Kummer (MPH student, Epidemiology) hopes to improve the health of her fellow natives in the Makah Tribe in Washington state. Before grad school, she helped carry out a community health assessment that included more than 400 interviews. She is now analyzing the data. "I am extremely grateful for the Grayston-Day Fellowship because it has allowed me to afford this graduate program and build my capacity as a young native professional," she says.
Married with a two-year-old daughter, Frank Angelo (PhD student, Health Services) says the Grayston-Day Fellowship allows him to focus on his studies and his family, instead of working 20 hours a week as a research assistant. "It makes it so people like me can do this kind of work," says Angelo. The Bellevue native spent six years working with mentally ill homeless adults at an outpatient psychiatry clinic in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood.
SPH Endowed Fellowship
Michael Arndt (PhD candidate, Epidemiology) didn't have to take out loans this year to study. "The SPH Endowed Fellowship enabled me to focus my attention more completely on the research and accelerated my program," he says. Arndt is studying the interaction between infectious intestinal disease and childhood growth in Bangladesh. He hopes his research can, among other things, help target certain pathogens for vaccine research.
For her practicum, Aradhana Thapa (MPH student, Global Health) evaluated a management training program. For her thesis, she studied use of family planning contraception after abortion. The Nepal native was able to concentrate on these projects without worrying about how to fund them, thanks to the Endowed Fellowship and other funding. "I hope to pay forward this act of kindness to other students in need in the future," Thapa says.
SPH Magnuson Scholarship
Christine Khosropour, a fourth-year PhD student (Epidemiology), seeks to better understand sexual behavior strategies that could prevent HIV transmission among men who have sex with men. Although her primary work is funded by a grant, winning the School's Magnuson Scholarship has allowed her to explore other research questions. She's helping conduct one of the first studies of its kind in the country on Truvada, an antiretroviral therapy recently approved for use as a prophylaxis.
Rattlinggourd Award
Kyle Durrant, a descendant of the Yakama and Klamath tribes, graduated in August 2014 with a bachelor's degree in public health. "I want to see someday that the Indian population doesn't suffer from all of these horrible diseases," says Durrant, who now works for the Urban Health Institute, a division of the Seattle Indian Health Board. The Rattlinggourd award allowed him to move near campus during his final quarter and avoid a daily commute from his family home in Buckley, more than 50 miles away. "It gave me a lot more time to focus on my studies," he says.
Remak Scholarship
Without the Remak Scholarship, William Tinashe Msemburi (PhD student, Global Health Metrics) might not be here at all to pursue his studies. "Cost of living in Seattle is significantly higher than in South Africa, where I was working before I came here," he says. "I would not have had sufficient funds for the move." With his PhD training, Msemburi hopes to conduct a burden of disease study for his native Zimbabwe while helping improve data quality and use in Eastern and South Africa—"which in turn I hope will feed into improved response by policymakers and improved health for African people."