Upstate medical student earns Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowship to conduct research in Ghana

Upstate Medical University medical student Katie Farkouh has been awarded a Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowship in Public Health for the 2024-2025 school year to conduct research in Ghana.

Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowships in Public Health are offered through a partnership between the Fulbright Program and the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. These awards were established to promote the expansion of research in public health and clinical research in resource-limited settings.

Farkouh, of New Hartford, just completed her third year at Upstate's Norton College of Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree in human evolutionary biology and a minor in global health and health policy from Harvard.

Her passions in medicine focus on the intersection between global health, refugee health, maternal health and pediatrics.

“As a daughter of Syrian immigrants, I have witnessed the various barriers and disparities within healthcare in global settings,” she said. “As a result, I strive to work with global and refugee populations to alleviate these disparities as a future physician.”

During her time at Upstate, she has co-chaired the Health Justice Conference, co-directed the Refugee Health Literacy Program, founded the Environmental Justice and Sustainability Club, interned at a global non-profit focused on maternal healthcare, tutored refugee and immigrant students at RISE, (Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment, a non-profit in Syracuse) and participated in clinical research.

As a Fulbright-Fogarty fellow, Farkouh will spend nine months in Accra, Ghana, studying urinary tract infection (UTI) risk and treatment outcomes in children with sickle cell disease.

“We are looking at different risk factors, etiologies and treatment outcomes of UTIs in kids with sickle cell disease compared to kids who don’t have it to see if there are associations," she said. "For example, we can see if kids with sickle cell are more likely to get a specific type of bacterial UTI.”

Accra is located on the Gulf of Guinea and is Ghana's largest city and capital with a population of more than 2 million. The fellowship runs from August to April, after which Farkouh will return to Upstate to complete her medical degree.

“I thought this was the perfect way to get a good amount of exposure to the field of global health during medical school so I can decide if I want to pursue it more in the future,” she said.

Farkouh’s background fueled her interest in public health. Both her parents are from Syria and growing up she had a lot of family still there. A few years ago, she helped her father, an endocrinologist, organize a free health clinic in Syria.

“It was just a cool experience,” she said. “I want to work in the Middle East at some point with global health because I am more familiar with the culture and the language.”

Farkouh leaves for Ghana at the end of August. The fellowship provides a monthly living stipend, funds for research, travel and her visa.