Sarah Antonevich knows firsthand how quickly medical conditions can worsen.
After college, she worked as an emergency medical technician in upstate New York and cared for patients when it sometimes took her ambulance an hour or more to get to a hospital. If the situation was extremely dire, they would call for a helicopter.
"A lot of the cases there were so acute because patients would wait until it's really painful, and once we got to them, they were in bad shape," she said.
Now Antonevich, a second-year medical student at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, is hoping to expand her skills in rural medicine internationally. As part of a Fulbright U.S. Student Program research award she received recently, Antonevich will be working with health care professionals in northern Rwanda and visiting remote clinics to address some of the most common skin conditions.
Although Rwanda has a robust health care system, Antonevich said that just like in the United States, when patients live far away from doctors and hospitals, health issues can deteriorate rapidly.
"If there are dermatology and health screening tools we can bring to people in Rwanda, and ways we can provide physicians with more treatment options, it will allow them to catch these conditions early, before a patient progresses to a more severe condition," said Antonevich, who worked with Dr. Brian Morrison, associate professor of dermatology and cutaneous surgery at the Miller School of Medicine, as well as faculty at the University of Health Equity (UHE) in Rwanda, to create her research proposal.
Antonevich is the only student who will be conducting research for six months in Rwanda starting in January through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Julia Pomeroy, who graduated from the University of Miami Business School in May with a degree in marketing, was also awarded a Fulbright grant this summer and will be teaching English for a year in South Korea.
The two women bring the University's total this year to eight Fulbright U.S. Student Program recipients, with five students earning awards to teach abroad and three students set to embark on a research journey.
"With the broad range of Fulbright opportunities available, there is no single path to becoming a Fulbright recipient," said Erika Green Liberus, director of the University's Prestigious Awards and Fellowships unit in its Office of Academic Enhancement. "Julia and Sarah have pursued different academic and professional paths, each finding a Fulbright opportunity that aligned with their unique goals and interests, and their success is another reminder that Fulbright is for everyone."
Pomeroy said the idea of teaching in South Korea appealed to her because of the nation's strong folklore culture, which she became interested in through the classes she took toward her English major. She hopes to use different forms of literature to create a fun, engaging curriculum for her students in Korea.
But Pomeroy also looks forward to the chance to live in another country for an entire year and to experience a very different culture. She hopes to pursue a career in international business one day.
"I'm really looking forward to making an impact on kids' lives, but I also hope that this experience will help me learn more about what I want to do in the future," she said. "I want to explore what can inspire me creatively and influence my business career."
Meanwhile, Antonevich is looking forward to working with faculty at UHE to first isolate the most prevalent skin wounds found in the nation and then, with their guidance, to create a treatment guide for dermatology residents and general physicians in the region. She will be based in Butaro, Rwanda, which is in the northern part of the central African nation.
She said she was attracted to the nation because it has one of the strongest health care systems in sub-Saharan Africa and is continually looking to improve. Also, since Antonevich's family hails from Ukraine, she said she always wanted to work in health care internationally, and this will be her first chance to do so.
"I've never been to Rwanda, but I've made some connections there already, and it shows how collaborative the international community really is," she added. "I think this will be a great way to meet other people around the world and to see how medical care is delivered in other places across the world."
