Mike Steele is a sophomore environmental science major with an anthropology minor at Colby College. Mike is a member of the environmental coalition on campus and the Colby Outing Club. He has worked for Maine’s Congress of Lake Associations to prevent pollution in Maine’s lakes. Mike’s anthropological interests include global health, Native American culture and history, and archaeology. His interest in the diabetes epidemic among Native American communities was piqued during a discussion about contemporary challenges to Native American life during his freshman year Indigenous Peoples of North America class. Mike chose this case study because, although diabetes is an enormously significant cause of death among Native Americans, the epidemic is still not well known to non-native Americans.
Karen Clark is a senior anthropology major at Colby College. Outside of academics, Karen is a coxswain for Colby’s Varsity Women’s Crew Team and an active member of the college’s STAND chapter. She first became interested in global public health while traveling to parts Central America and Southern Africa in high school. Karen decided to do something about the inequalities she witnessed and has been working with World Camp, Inc. to teach basic health and environmental awareness in rural Malawi for the past two years. Believing that poverty reduction and access to basic health necessities such as clean water and proper sanitation facilities are the solution to global health inequities, she chose to study polio in Pakistan to learn about disease-specific approaches to global health in a region she knew little about.
Annika Moline is a sophomore anthropology major at Colby College. She is a member of many groups on campus including a capella, Colby Dancers, and the College’s emergency medical services team, and plans to attend medical school after graduation. Annika’s anthropological interests are centered around health inequities, linguistics, gender issues, and interplay between the natural sciences and anthropology, and particularly the work of Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Paul Farmer. She was introduced to the topic of women’s reproductive choices specifically in Brooklyn and Puerto Rico after coming across some of Dr. Iris López’s work in the library and reading her ethnography Matters of Choice.
Jenny Reiner is senior anthropology major with a minor in Education at Colby College. At Colby, Jenny is a member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving Team. In addition, she also participates in the mentoring program, Colby Cares About Kids. Jenny is interested in examining health inequities in the framework of human rights and working towards promoting social justice. She first became involved in global health when she volunteered with the nonprofit organization, World Camp, Inc, which empowers Malawian rural communities by providing them with basic health and environment education. Since then, she has become involved in the domestic issue of childhood obesity. Jenny chose to focus on the cholera outbreak in Haiti because of its high prevalence in the news. Through reading newspaper articles, she was motivated to investigate the topic because of the inevitable human rights violations that were occurring in Haiti.