This summer I am interning at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., working primarily with the Rodham Institute and its founder, Dr. Jehan El-Bayoumi, or as she calls herself “Gigi”.
The Rodham Institute focuses on health equity in the D.C. area and works to provide better healthcare and to improve the social determinants of health in the impoverished areas of the city. It also exposes medical residents and interns to the poorer parts of the city that they serve, yet may never have seen.
Despite being one of the world’s great cities, and our nation’s seat of power, there exists an enormous economic and health disparity gap in the D.C. Area, actually ranking first in the nation for HIV, cancer mortality, and end-stage kidney disease rates per capita. Rodham not only works to provide healthcare to the people of the less fortunate parts of the city (“across the river”, Wards 7 and 8, “Anacostia”, etc. ) but also to better their lives and health through the social determinants of health being: zip code, ethnicity, educational level, social class, local environment, and access to healthy food.
Currently Dr. El-Bayoumi is actually “on vacation” (though she still is working as hard as many people do regularly) and thus has less for me to do than she would otherwise. Last week I helped to bring together the final pieces for a “Friend-Raiser” held by the Rodham Institute in cooperation with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) that took place on Thursday. The head of the MPAA, Senator Christopher Dodd, is an old friend of Dr. Gigi’s and helped her set up the fundraiser and movie screening of “Inside-Out” the new Pixar film that focuses on mental health. The theme was appropriate because the people that Rodham targets most often seek improved mental health. Anyways, I helped to put the finishing touches on the planning for the fundraiser, which I also attended, and actually saw Pinhead’s Executive Director Sarah Holbrooke as well, who was also in attendance. I also got to meet Senator Dodd and tell him a little about what I am doing in DC.
Other than that, I have been working on a research project with another doctor at GW named Dr. Vivek Jain, who specializes as a Sleep Doctor of sorts. He introduced to me his concern of the ridiculous wastage of medication in the United States, and the fact that many people don’t even have access to it while billions of dollars worth of it are just being thrown away or flushed! He had previously worked with a GW med student to create a pilot survey to try to assess the wastage and local pharmacy policies in the D.C. Area. He has brought me on to help him continue the study and to bring the research to light and possibly create a non-profit with the purpose of donating unused medications and to change the pharmaceutical industry’s current system so as to prevent some of the wastage.
The work I have been doing with him is more health policy; I have created three surveys (for the individual, local pharmacies, and institutional pharmacies) to assess not only the wastage in the D.C. Area, but also people’s opinion on the subject, how people are disposing of medications, and what the need for a medication donation system is, among other things. Today for instance, we went to the Institutional Review Board at GW to make sure we can publish the survey without legal implications and to protect the rights of the survey takers (basically to make sure we could conduct the study within the set parameters) . Luckily, our study is exempt from review, thus enabling us to move forward. Tomorrow we will be handing out our first pilot surveys to patients in Dr. Jain’s clinic, where I will be following him.
Another bonus is that Dr. Jain also wants to enlist my help in writing and publishing a paper at the end of my stay so that the results of our study can become available to the public.
I will begin to do more work with Rodham as Dr. Gigi comes back to work this week, and I should be helping with upcoming projects and shadowing her at clinic as well.
All in all, I am loving the city of D.C. (to which I am a newcomer) and have been doing some sightseeing in my free time! Everyone here that I have met has been extremely kind and accommodating, in regard to both my host family and all the faculty at GW that I have been in contact with.
I would like to thank Pinhead a thousand times for giving me this amazing opportunity. I couldn’t be more grateful or happier with what I am doing!
Thank You!
-Madie Alexander
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