My commitment to academic excellence stems from my own struggle with disease that needs research attention and commitment to provide a reduction in morbidity in society.
Beginning in August of twelfth grade, I faced a sudden unwarranted impediment. Discerning letters on the whiteboard, reading street signs, and recognizing faces transformed into arduous draining tasks like never before. Paralyzed by unprecedented vision loss, I visited my primary physician who referred me to a series of ophthalmologists and optometrists. After six months of intensive diagnostic testing, professionals reached a peer-reviewed conclusion, Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy. The recessively-inherited genetic disorder often presents and causes dramatic loss of visual acuity during puberty. Hearing the disheartening verdict, I worried and became agitated that the condition would progress to …show more content…
The epidemiology initiative, Children’s Healthy Living program, spans twelve jurisdictions. In the Nutrition Support Shared Resource at the University of Hawai’i Cancer Center, I conduct nutrition assessment on indigenous children ages two through eight afflicted by an alarmingly high incidence of obesity and metabolic syndrome. The depressing health disparity leaves some participants with diabetes before fourth grade. This clinical manifestation translates to a long-term dramatic battle of disease and careful monitoring of blood glucose in these prepubescent youth. The intervention study is the largest ever nutrition study of indigenous people and the only data collection of nutrition and lifestyle habits for these jurisdictions. The study gives me crucial exposure to research methods and further drives my curiosity for the mechanisms of obesity. From investigating the obesity epidemic at a population level, I am now absorbed in understanding the molecular implications of disease on its effects, prevention, and
Beginning in August of twelfth grade, I faced a sudden unwarranted impediment. Discerning letters on the whiteboard, reading street signs, and recognizing faces transformed into arduous draining tasks like never before. Paralyzed by unprecedented vision loss, I visited my primary physician who referred me to a series of ophthalmologists and optometrists. After six months of intensive diagnostic testing, professionals reached a peer-reviewed conclusion, Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy. The recessively-inherited genetic disorder often presents and causes dramatic loss of visual acuity during puberty. Hearing the disheartening verdict, I worried and became agitated that the condition would progress to …show more content…
The epidemiology initiative, Children’s Healthy Living program, spans twelve jurisdictions. In the Nutrition Support Shared Resource at the University of Hawai’i Cancer Center, I conduct nutrition assessment on indigenous children ages two through eight afflicted by an alarmingly high incidence of obesity and metabolic syndrome. The depressing health disparity leaves some participants with diabetes before fourth grade. This clinical manifestation translates to a long-term dramatic battle of disease and careful monitoring of blood glucose in these prepubescent youth. The intervention study is the largest ever nutrition study of indigenous people and the only data collection of nutrition and lifestyle habits for these jurisdictions. The study gives me crucial exposure to research methods and further drives my curiosity for the mechanisms of obesity. From investigating the obesity epidemic at a population level, I am now absorbed in understanding the molecular implications of disease on its effects, prevention, and