Each year, hundreds of submissions are considered for the electronic poster competition sponsored by the medical journal The Lancet Global Health at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference in Washington, Dc. This year, UVM Larner College of Medicine medical student Alexandra Miller '18 and her team beat 543 submissions to become one of 8 award winners with their poster "Cervical Cancer Screening in Rural Tanzania; A Capacity Building Project."
Alexandra Miller, UVM Larner College of Medicine, Class of 2018
Each year, hundreds of submissions are considered for the electronic poster competition sponsored by the medical journal
The Lancet Global Health at the
Consortium of Universities for Global Health Conference in Washington, Dc. This year, UVM Larner College of Medicine medical student Alexandra Miller '18 and her team beat 543 submissions to become one of 25 award winners with their poster "Cervical Cancer Screening in Rural Tanzania; A Capacity Building Project."
Between her first and second years of medical school, Miller spent 6 weeks in Uganda as part of a global health elective offered through the
Global Health Program at the College and Western Connecticut Health Network. During that time she worked at one of two program sites in the country - Mulago Hospital in Kampala - and became heavily invested in international women's health, specifically reproductive health. In 2017 she traveled to Tanzania with classmate Kelley Collier '18 and UVM Assistant Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Reproductive Sciences Anne Dougherty, M.D., M.A. to work at Wasso District Hospital as part of an elective available to Larner College of Medicine students during the fourth year of medical school.
While in Tanzania, Miller, Collier and Dougherty worked with Wasso District Hospital to bring cervical cancer screening and treatment to women in low resource settings. Their winning poster highlights the development of a longitudinal capacity building program model developed by Dougherty to achieve this goal. Miller says that she and Collier created the poster to highlight Dougherty's program model "because of her success to build capacity, have an impact on the local level, deliver healthcare founded in local customs, and provide medical students with an unbelievably rich immersive experience." She adds, "Quite unique to Dr. Dougherty's model is incorporating language and cultural interpreters to guide communication and education between all of the invested partners."
As the first author of the poster, Miller had the honor of receiving the Lancet-CUGH Best Student Poster Contest award but she's quick to point out that she received the award on behalf of the entire project team including Collier (second author), Dougherty, and Kiaro Tendeu, their language and cultural translator.
Learn more about the project and Miller and Collier's poster here.