Public Health Graduate Students Expand Their Horizons in Israel

Each year, the Miami, Israel, Science, and Health (M.I.S.H.) Science Fellowship – established by the Sanford and Gabrielle Kuvin Foundation – awards various graduate students in the Miller School of Medicine’s Department of Public Health Sciences with travel awards. The fellowship is designed to support travel and work in a foreign country that is dedicated to the foundation’s mission, which involves building peace in the Middle East region through science. Selected students fulfill their capstone project, field experience or thesis with the support of the fellowship. 

Anna Yabloch and Jhon Medina, two M.P.H. candidates, and Laura Romero, an M.S.P.H. candidate, were selected as MISH fellows this year. They completed their capstone field experience in various public health organizations in Israel, such as the Ministry of Health in Israel’s Department of Environmental Epidemiology, the Linda Joy Pollin Cardiovascular Wellness Center for Women, and the Jerusalem District of Health, which is one of seven major health bureaus of the Ministry of Health in Israel.

At the Department of Environmental Epidemiology, Yabloch worked on a project on how climate change is associated with leptospirosis, which is a bacterial disease that can affect humans and animals. It can lead to kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure, respiratory distress, and death if not treated. Yabloch did a literature review on the topic for six weeks. 

“There has been a spike of leptospirosis in different regions in Israel. The year before I came, there was an outbreak over the summer. It is a waterborne pathogen, so it was mostly found in ponds, lakes, rivers, and canals. People who would go swimming in these places would get infected,” Yabloch said.

Yabloch said that the MISH fellowship is definitely a program that she wanted to apply for, as she wanted to obtain international experience.

“When I found out there was a fellowship that granted me the opportunity to work and study in Israel, I was ecstatic because this was the perfect opportunity to combine everything that I liked,” Yabloch added. “I was able to get hands-on experience in public health and see how a government organization operates.”

At the Linda Joy Pollin Cardiovascular Wellness Center for Women, Romero worked on environmental and genetic factors that contributed to women’s cardiovascular disease in Israel. Her goals were to assist in addressing the needs of the Arab, ultra-Orthodox Jewish, disabled, and general populations, as well as to assist with the preparation of scientific literature reviews, manuscripts for publication, and grant writing.  

During her time in Israel, Romero conducted research on the levels of magnesium in desalinated drinking water and determined its effects on cardiovascular mortality, including differences in gender. She and her team composed an introduction regarding the association between secondhand smoke and coronary heart disease among Arab women in Israel, as well as conducted research on the barriers and facilitators for establishing a community-based smoke-free home. Lastly, they also composed a research proposal on carriers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and other cardiomyopathies.

“We found that low drinking water magnesium concentrations are linked to the development of ischemic heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes mellitus. Women are also at high risk of cardiovascular disease mortality due to lower amounts of magnesium in men,” Ramero said.

She and the team also found that within the Israel and Arab communities, there is a vulnerable population with a higher likelihood of exposure to tobacco smoke, where women face the most significant risk. Female carriers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy may develop weakness and cardiomyopathy at later stages in life and may develop asymptomatic left ventricular systolic dysfunction as well.

Medina, who did his field experience in the Jerusalem District of Health, focused his field experience on providing assistance in monitoring and enforcing food security requirements in several sites.

“The inspections were conducted in sites to detect conditions that threaten the food supply and present a risk to public health. We did four big inspections at butcher shops and seized a total of 2.5 tons of met, such as poultry and beef,” Medina said.

Aside from conducting the inspections, Medina attended policy discussions and meetings at the National Food Services, an organization that is in charge of identifying current public health problems in Israel. He also performed inspections in markets and analyzed data that was related to Salmonella outbreak – caused by contaminated eggs and tahini – in the Jerusalem District.

“I lived a real-world public health experience and had experience in working in a professional environment,” Medina noted.

To learn more about the MISH program, visit The Kuvin Foundation. 

Written by Amanda Torres

November 5, 2019