Resident Travel Awards

In the Spring of 2019, Dr. Bryanna Schwartz traveled to Bangkok, Thailand to spend four weeks rotating with the pediatric cardiology department at Ramathibodi Hospital. As a future pediatric cardiologist, the opportunity enabled Dr. Schwartz to unite her interest in global health with cardiology. While there, she was able to observe and learn from the different methods of diagnosis and management of both acquired and congenital heart disease.

Thailand has universal healthcare, enabling Dr. Schwartz to learn about the benefits and challenges of treating pediatric patients through a different type of healthcare system from that in the US. On the weekends, she was able to visit cultural sites in Thailand and hang out with fellow providers. Dr. Schwartz has returned to CNH, bringing with her new knowledge and expertise to advance the care of her patients at home and abroad.

Through the 2019 GHI Resident Travel Awards, Jeanne Delgado, MD, visited the Centro Latinoamericano de Perinatologia, Salud de la Mujer y Reproductive (CLAP/SMR) in Montevideo, Uruguay. As Dr. Delgado describes, CLAP/SMR is a regional office of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), created to focus on neonatal and women’s health in the Americas. While in Montevideo, Dr. Delgado spent six-weeks on an internship through the PAHO, working closely with regional advisor in perinatal health, Pablo Duran, MD, MPH, PhD. Dr. Duran is trained as both a pediatrician and an epidemiologist, and previously served as a professor of public health in Argentina prior to joining the World Health Organization.

Under Dr. Duran’s tutelage, Dr. Delgado’s main research centered around the comparison of two robust databases reporting perinatal and maternal care data from patients across Latin America and the Caribbean. The first database, created at CLAP to monitor pregnant women from their first prenatal visit to discharge following delivery, is abbreviated SIP for Sistema Informatico Perinatal. It tracks past medical history, screening tests and results, treatments, and delivery course, and includes over 700,000 women. The second, named the Elimination of Maternal-to-Child Transmission (EMTCT+) is a progress report recently released which reports similar information as the SIP.

Dr. Delgado used these two data groups to determine if, first, they were collecting similar data, and second, to compare screening rates, results, and treatment of four infectious diseases: HIV, syphilis, hepatitis B, and Chaga’s disease. Based on these findings, Dr. Delgado aimed to determine in infection with HIV or syphilis correlates to adverse fetal outcomes such as a low APGAR score, SGA, stillbirth or even neonatal death.

Currently, Dr. Delgado is continuing to examine the data she collected while in Montevideo and is developing a manuscript describing and analyzing the correlation between HIV or syphilis infection and adverse fetal outcomes.

In addition to her fruitful research, Dr. Delgado enjoyed the opportunity to observe a different healthcare setting than that of the US. Uruguay is progressive in its healthcare policy, implementing a preventative model in 2007, Dr. Delgado reports, perhaps in an attempt to lower major healthcare costs due to an increasing elderly population and decreasing birthrate. Uruguay is also more politically liberal than many areas of the US, having legalized same sex marriage, abortion, and marijuana. Through the GHI Resident Travel Award, Dr. Delgado was able to initiate important research in maternal transmission of infectious diseases as well as observe and engage with a progressive healthcare system, bringing her findings back to Children’s in order to enrich the care of her patients both local and international.