Andrew Sherman, M.D.
Our vision to improve the health of children extends far beyond the Rochester community. Dr. Andrew Sherman, a CARE graduate, leads Netlife, which focuses on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria in West Africa. He now teaches Global Health in the CARE Track along with Dr. Nirupama Laroia, a URMC neonatologist.
Shalini Vaid, M.D.
Former CARE Resident Shalini Vaid won the "NMPRA award" which is granted each year to one Med-Peds resident planning to complete a clinical Internal Medicine or Pediatric elective in the developing world during residency. Because of this award, Shalini was able to travel to India for her CARE project entitled “Self-Care and Foot-Care Management in Diabetes.”
“Participating in the Global Health track was one of the most enriching experiences I had in Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency at URMC. The track begins in your second year of residency with CARE Block, which was an amazing two weeks of learning how community projects are formed and how to build relationships with existing community-based organizations. Participants of both the CARE track and global health track met together for these two weeks to learn these skills and create our own projects. It was wonderful because we were able to share ideas and help each other brainstorm new ideas. People often pair up to do projects together if they found they had similar passions and ideas. A few important philosophies we learned were “don’t reinvent the wheel” and “keep it simple.” These were helpful to guide me in creating my project entitled “Distributing Footwear to Prevent Diabetic Foot Ulcers in Uttar Pradesh, India” as I wanted to make a meaningful impact on patients in India with diabetes with a relatively simple intervention. Distributing diabetic footwear to patients was a very achievable project in the midst of a very busy residency. I partnered with six member institutions across the state of Uttar Pradesh, India for their project entitled “Self-Care and Foot-Care Management in Diabetes.” I traveled to India to identify patients and organize for shoe distribution and returned a year after the shoes were distributed to survey patients on whether the shoes were beneficial and how the project could be improved.
I had a great amount of support from both Dr. Aligne, the CARE track director, and Dr. Adler, the global health track director. They were instrumental in helping with connecting to various other resources and revising drafts for grants and poster presentations.
Dyson Day was a fantastic opportunity for me to be able to present my Global Health project. I felt motivated to spend the time to analyze my data and create a poster as I knew my mentors, fellow residents, and community members would be coming to Dyson Day to learn more about my project. We are so fortunate to have the CARE/Global Health Tracks in our residency and the support of the Hoekelman Center.”
~ Shalini Vaid, M.D.