timefoskoo!

I think I mentioned this before, but this week I spent most days in the back of the epi/biostats class that Dr. Miller teaches, every year for 2 weeks, to a class of Malawian MPH students. While a lot of it was over my head, I did get a nice review of statistics on Monday...if anyone could make stats tolerable, it would be Bill, who is so friendly, a great teacher, and really knows his stuff. But stats still kinda makes my skin crawl.

Action shot, complete with hand gestures.

We were very sad to leave the lovely Kim Porter, but she'll be joining us next weekend! I'm glad I got to see Blantyre, but I was definitely ready to get "home" to Lilongwe! We took a charter bus back, an interesting 5-hour trip including too much drammamine, awful Kenyan soap operas blaring on the bus's TV, a beautiful sunset, and lots of snacks which did not but could have included roasted mice on a stick. Tasty.

As far as my work is concerned, I've mostly finished designing/refining the new data entry form for the community department to use on their tracing visits, and will hopefully start piloting the form this week. I'm also learning a lot about database design and management, and Bill is going to be helping me a lot as I get the new tracing database up and running.

I started out a little frustrated about my project logistics, and bummed that it wouldn't be something I can easily translate into a scientific paper. But I'm starting to take a lot of pride in it! Drs. Hosseinipour and Miller are really supportive and receptive to my ideas, and very respectful of my input considering it's coming from a first-year med student with little to no experience in epidemiology, study design, or data analysis. I've certainly gotten a crash course in all these things! And it’s great to have a working understanding of the UNC Project studies, what a HUGE operation it is, and to feel like my work will really help things work better here - even if I won't be making it into JAMA anytime soon :)