King is working alongside the community liaison officer at the Tuberculosis & HIV Investigation Network with funding from the CPGC.
With the media spotlight focused on Ebola last year, many other deadly illnesses seemed to be forgotten. But Renee King '16 was inspired to work in the fight against some of them. This summer, thanks to funding from the Center for Peace and Global Citizenship, she is is in Durban, South Africa, interning at the Tuberculosis & HIV Investigation Network (THINK), which works to discover new drugs to fight TB in a shorter amount of time, among other things. Durban has the most cases of drug-resistant TB per population and suffered from the first known instance of Extensively Drug Resistant TB in 2005. With more strains of drug-resistant TB presenting every year, discovering new treatments is critical.
King is working alongside THINK's community liaison officer, which requires dealing with government officials as well as nurses and patients. She has been planning events, organizing training sessions, posting about THINK on social media, and attending numerous meetings and conferences, including the African AIDS Conference.
King says that courses, such as Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology Chris Roebuck's "Viruses, Humans, Vital Politics: An Anthropology of HIV & AIDS" and Matthew Kavangh's "Health Politics, Law, and Policy in Developing Countries," helped prepare her for her internship. "They gave me the foundation of knowledge that I needed to engage in serious conversations about health, community engagement, activism, power and so much more," she says.
As part of her chemistry major, King has spent the last two summers working in laboratories, but during a Center for Career and Professional Advising-sponsored winter externship, King visited the AIDS Institute in New York. "[I]t really opened my mind to NGOs, HIV, and the global impact of both diseases and funding," says King. "THINK seemed like a great organization to observe community interaction with research and how exactly clinical trials dealing with people are conducted."
—Jack Hasler '15
"Summer Centered" is a series exploring our students' Center-funded summer work.
