MEET OUR STUDENT - SINANG LEE
A MPH degree requires a practicum, and Sinang Lee knew exactly where she wanted to do hers. She had not been back to the Cambodian province where she was born, and wanted to bring health education to the farmers who live there. Lee sought a travel grant from the Puget Sound Partners for Global Health through the School of Public Health and Community Medicine. She collaborated with a local nongovernmental organization, Srer Khmer, that was working on integrated pest management in Cambodia.
Lee adapted a research method developed by her adviser, Professor Richard Fenske, into a training tool that could be taken into rural areas. Fenske developed a fluorescent tracer technique for quantifying pesticide exposures among farm workers. Lee took the concept—and a battery-operated black light—into the countryside. Lee set up her informal classroom in 17 villages, drawing a total of 200 farmers. The nature of family farms brought children, grandparents—and even the occasional chicken—to her training sessions. In a role-playing exercise, she would outfit a farmer with a typical backpack sprayer, which, instead of pesticide, contained a fluorescent tracer that is invisible in daylight.
Under black light, however, the drips and spills of even a brief spray job become shockingly evident. Although farm-worker response was immediate, Lee knows the pesticide problem in Cambodia is a complicated mix of policymaking, corporate profits, and microeconomics. Although progress is slow, Lee is convinced that her native Cambodia is moving in the right direction for environmental and occupational health.
She graduated in 2006, and is now doing community outreach as a senior staff environmental specialist in the Washington State Department of Ecology’s Water Quality Program.