School of Public Health and Community Medicine - University of Washington - Autumn 2006

This was the first summer that Araceli Vasquez wasn’t working with her family in the beet fields of southern Idaho. Instead, she was in the Yakima Valley, conducting community-based research with an agricultural community.

Vasquez, a biology major at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, was one of five students who spent the summer doing field and laboratory research at our department.

l to r: Brandt Pein, Amina Negash, Araceli Vasquez, Christopher Diangco, Dustin Palm.
Photo by Amy Bomberger

Undergraduate Research Program

The transition from farmworker to researcher was made possible through a new undergraduate summer research program developed by Rory Murphy, manager of our graduate student services. Murphy views research internships as an effective way to interest students from minority or underrepresented groups in science. “A program like this offers them a chance to learn about research, particularly as it is practiced in our department, and about the education and training involved,” she said.

She recruited through the Ronald E. McNair Program, administered by the UW Office of Minority Affairs; the Health Sciences Center’s STAR (Stipends for Training Aspiring Researchers) Program, funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; and Heritage College in Yakima.

“When I asked for faculty volunteers to work with the students, I got a lot of replies, offering very high-quality research experiences across a range of disciplines,” Murphy said. Several graduate students volunteered to run weekly research discussion groups for the students. For information on next year’s program, visit http://depts.washington.edu/envhlth/sumtrain.html.

Vasquez, a senior, learned about the summer opportunity from her adviser. She plans to apply to medical school after she completes her undergraduate work, so she was looking for something that would give her experience related to science or medicine.

She looked at the web page describing the program and the various research slots available, and then she promptly applied. “I didn’t even realize that I would be working with farmworkers,” she said. “But that was a big plus for me.”

Like the other students, she had a volunteer faculty mentor. Matthew Keifer, associate professor of environmental health and of medicine, directed her work with a Yakima Valley-based community health project. Jennifer Crowe, research coordinator, was her immediate supervisor.

Community-Based Research

Vasquez was doing interviews for a community health survey, one of several efforts underway as part of El Proyecto Bienestar, “The Well-Being Project,” which teams researchers and students from the UW with Heritage College, Radio KDNA, and the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic to identify and address occupational and environmental health issues among farming families in the area.

The project is funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. It’s part of a growing trend at the UW to establish community-based participatory research projects, which are guided in part by community needs and usually have community advisory groups.

“I didn’t realize that you could do research work that is based in a community,” Vasquez said. She also became more aware of the health concerns that agricultural workers and their kids face, one focus of the work in the Yakima Valley.

Vasquez had already formed a desire to become a doctor, but her experience in the summer program widened her view of the possibilities. Now she is thinking about adding public health training to her medical studies. “I think I would like to be like Dr. Keifer,” she said, “and work on projects that could really help communities and individual people, too.”

Overcoming Barriers

Amina Negash is another student who brought her life experiences into research. Negash, a UW biochemistry major, worked with Professor Jane Koenig on air pollution research.

Her family moved from Ethiopia four years ago. “It has been both jarring and exhilarating to adapt to a new environment,” she said. She decided to enroll in regular classes instead of English as a Second Language programs at Ballard High School, determined to overcome barriers by working hard, reading a lot, and doing her assignments faithfully.

She became fascinated with biochemistry in high school because it integrates her love of chemistry with her desire to learn more about the biological process. She is interested in genomics and environmental and occupational health. She wants to understand how environmental factors contribute to different health problems.

At Seattle Central Community College, she had a 3.6 GPA in a calculus-based physics sequence. She also served as a tutor in math and chemistry. Since she transferred to the biochemistry program at UW, she has been part of a microgravity experiment that will be tested at the Johnson Space Center.

Other Student Participants

In addition to the students in this story, these undergraduates took part in the program this summer:

Christopher Diangco, with Professor John Kissel, working on human exposure to environmental contaminants.

Dustin Palm, with Professor Michael Yost, working on measuring exposure to chemicals and other environmental agents, including noise and heat.

Brandt Pein, a UW chemistry major, with Assistant Professor John Scott Meschke, working as an environmental microbiologist.

—Claire Dietz of Health Science News & Community Relations contributed to this story

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