Kate Wiegert Advances Research

Third year Duke medical student Kate Wiegert recently returned from Haiti after working on several different research projects.

With Duke Global Health Institute graduate student Marnie Cooper Priest, Kate made the third of three planned visits with matrons, or midwives in the Fondwa community.  The student project assessed what the midwives had learned in their training sessions and what skills they were applying in their daily work.  Marnie (below left) presented the midwives with a special stretcher to help move mothers in labor down Fondwa’s steep mountain paths.

Kate also began a survey project that Duke medical students will continue on their trip to Fondwa in March.  Kate walked miles up and down rocky and sometimes slippery mountain paths with her guide (above the middle, pointing out the route) to test their questionnaire on birth practices and outcomes.

Kate also worked with FHM’s nutritional program at the Blanchard Clinic.  She walked the Blanchard community with FHM employee Annaus Frankel (above right) and met one of the babies who had successfully graduated from the program (center in photo with Annaus).  Kate also helped assess and enroll new children in the program (below left). Finally, she got a much-deserved day off at a beautiful beach near Port-au-Prince (below right).