Senior Kristen Finney and GlobeMed lend a helping hand
The West African nation of Togo is not a vacation destination for many Americans, but it’s where senior Kristen Finney, a chemical engineering major and co-president of MIT GlobeMed, spent a summer and a winter break working with a local HIV/AIDS clinic to improve its community health worker program. “Togo is consistently ranked one of the 10 poorest countries in the world,” Finney says. “It’s not necessarily a fair and open democracy, and for that reason the United States and many European governments refuse to give any aid to Togo specifically, so Ghana, the country right next door, gets eight times the health care aid that Togo does.” Early motivation Finney’s involvement in GlobeMed stems partly from her own experience in high school. At age 16, while swimming competitively, Finney noticed shortness of breath that sent her to the doctor, where she was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect that required surgery. “I had...