Children’s Global Health Initiative (CGHI) Research Opportunity in Vietnam

Nat Nelson ’11 sent us the following e-mail last week:

I am primarily writing to ask if you could share an international research opportunity with students graduating this May or anyone else who may be interested in medicine, maternal health, or nutrition. The principal investigators of my project would like to hire another young person to fill my role in the field and have asked that I advertise the position to Middlebury graduates. The work is hard and can be isolating (I am the only foreigner regularly working in the Province), but it has been an eye-opening and deeply gratifying experience, especially for someone considering a career in medical field research.

Below is a brief description of the research and a link to a quick video about our work.

The Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) has partnered with the National Institute of Nutrition in Hanoi, Vietnam, to study maternal nutrition in the rural Phu Tho Province, where malnutrition among mothers is believed to contribute to stunting in the growth and development of children. The project is investigating the effect of small, nutrient-dense meals (consisting of vegetables and meats from local markets) distributed to women prior to and throughout their first pregnancy on birth outcomes (chiefly birth weights and incidence of prematurity).

The research is unique in that it relies upon locally-sourced food, thereby offering a more sustainable, community-oriented solution to the problem of maternal malnutrition than do peer studies utilizing pills or other foreign-produced supplements. The team is looking for a recent college or university graduate interested in medicine, field research, maternal health, or nutrition to live in Phu Tho and monitor the distribution and consumption of the meals as well as the health status of the enrolled women.

A brief video about the the Children’s Global Health Initiative and this project can be found at <http://www.cghi.info/>. Interested students should contact Nathaniel Nelson (Midd ’11) at nath.c.nelson@gmail.com.