Research Symposium

BIO

I am a first year student originally from Sacramento, California. My academic interests include nutrition, exercise science, physical therapy, and tourism. My biggest academic goal is to receive a Doctorate in Physical Therapy. I also hope to study abroad in Spain during my undergraduate education. My research interests primarily involve finding ways to improve human health using diet and physical exercise, rather than medications and surgery. I am passionate about promoting a healthy lifestyle for everyone, regardless of income. Additionally, I believe that nutrition is an understudied topic, and that the key to disease prevention may lie in changes to the human diet.
Out of the classroom, I have worked as a white water rafting guide, rock climbing guide, youth rock climbing coach, and canyoneering guide. Hobbies of mine include cross-country running, rock climbing, reading, and painting. At FSU, I am an active member of the Student Dietetic Association, Healthy Noles (a branch of CHAW focusing on educating FSU students about health and wellness), and the FSU Climbing Club.

Preparing for the Next Pandemic

Abstract

Preparing for the Next Pandemic is a public health research project through UROP. This project is being carried out by researcher Joseph Grzywacz along with an additional five undergraduate research students. The purpose of this research is minimize the elevated burden of disease and death in future pandemics. The specific aim of this research is to lower disease and death in marginalized communities, more specifically the farmworker community. This project is a joint effort between the National Center for Farmworker Health and the US Centers for Disease Control.
The farming community suffered greatly when Covid-19 hit in 2020, as they were not prepared or enabled to fight the virus. The goal of our study is to help these rural communities by finding methods that will increase disease prevention and improve disease response. By doing so, we can suggest policies that may be adopted by farming communities to prevent and successfully fight the next pandemic. Through a comprehensive literary review of 33 articles, we determined what factors affect the community response in the event of a pandemic. From our analysis of these studies, we created interview guides in order to interview leaders of organizations that protect agricultural laborers. Using the information given to us by these individuals, we will hypothesize factors that will increase disease prevention and produce possible policies that may improve farm worker safety in the future. Our intention is that through this study, health officials will implement new health policies that benefit Latino farmers in the United States.

Keywords: Disease-prevention, farmworker, policy