The aim of this project was to identify current trends in organ transplant trafficking to build upon a Mayo Clinic internship in which I conducted research and published an article: “A Scoping Review of Labor and Organ Trafficking Resources for U.S. Healthcare Professionals” in the Journal of Human Trafficking. Healthcare professionals need to be educated on the underreported problem of organ trafficking in the United States and awareness needs to be spread. Due to the lack of research available in the United States on organ trafficking for healthcare professionals, I attempted to find international sources and to make suggestions on how awareness can be created. The research pointed out problems in the United States, such as doctor-patient confidently that make it difficult to track the issue. A major theme was discovered on transplant tourism, which is where wealthy individuals from the U.S. and other developed countries travel to third-world countries to take advantage of vulnerable individuals, who may be victims of organ trafficking.

You can find my documentary here. Throughout the process of creating my thesis I was consistently intrigued by one constant phenomenon I’ve noticed throughout my time at Cronkite – that of competitive collaboration. I’d define that term as what happens when thousands of highly motivated individuals are thrown into a space where they are competing for a limited number of jobs in a high-pressure environment, while still needing to work with each other in order to succeed. Throw college social lives and general young adult anxieties on top of that, and you have the culture present within journalism school. For my project I wanted to contextualize and present a cohesive look at both the mentalities of students and the environment of the school. Dear Cronkite: A Love Letter is truly that. A labor of love and care for a place that has impacted me so deeply, I hope that this twenty-one-minute documentary opens a window into the world students deal with on a daily basis. Everyone interviewed expressed their deepest appreciation for the Cronkite School, while also making clear that they believe there are changes which could be made to better the educational environment. Every opinion and statement in this film comes from a place of compassion and respect.

Significant health inequalities exist between different castes and ethnic communities in India, and identifying the roots of these inequalities is of interest to public health research and policy. Research on caste-based health inequalities in India has historically focused on general, government-defined categories, such as “Scheduled Castes,” “Scheduled Tribes,” and “Other Backward Classes.” This method obscures the diversity of experiences, indicators of well-being, and health outcomes between castes, tribes, and other communities in the “scheduled” category. This study analyzes data on 699,686 women from 4,260 castes, tribes and communities in the 2015-2016 Demographic and Health Survey of India to: (1) examine the diversity within and overlap between general, government-defined community categories in both wealth, infant mortality, and education, and (2) analyze how infant mortality is related to community category membership and socioeconomic status (measured using highest level of education and household wealth). While there are significant differences between general, government-defined community categories (e.g., scheduled caste, backward class) in both wealth and infant mortality, the vast majority of variation between communities occurs within these categories. Moreover, when other socioeconomic factors like wealth and education are taken into account, the difference between general, government-defined categories reduces or disappears. These findings suggest that focusing on measures of education and wealth at the household level, rather than general caste categories, may more accurately target those individuals and households most at risk for poor health outcomes. Further research is needed to explain the mechanisms by which discrimination affects health in these populations, and to identify sources of resilience, which may inform more effective policies.