Fulbrighter Samantha Lee is Engineering Change


05/07/2010

Scene Magazine | Spring 2010

Recent St. Ambrose graduate Samantha Lee is enjoying learning the culture and customs of the Caribbean republic of Trinidad and Tobago, but her 10-month stay there goes way beyond an opportunity to expand her horizons. As Ambrose's fifth Fulbright Scholar in six years and the first who is an industrial engineering major, the Bloomington, Ill., native is helping find ways AIDS can be reduced in a country where the infection is growing in the population.

Lee is focusing on how technology is impacting the health care facilities serving those with HIV/AIDS. Instead of assuming that a fully automated computer information system is better, Lee is studying each clinic's method of keeping track of patient information.

"Clinics manage information in many ways, all the way from paper to paperless," she says. "Ultimately it's the effectiveness, not the technology, that counts when it comes to patient care."
As a result, the culture and customs she's been learning about have become extremely important in informing her work.

"It's very interesting that Trinidad and Tobago is considered a Third World country, because in some ways it is much more advanced then the U.S.," Lee says. "‘Trinis' are very accepting of different ethnicities, races and religions, and everyone celebrates and observes all religious holidays because the country and people truly support all cultures."

-J. Kettering

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The following article was on the SAU website Dec. 2, 2009.

This spring St. Ambrose proudly announced its fifth Fulbright student in the past six years. Bloomington-Normal native Samantha Lee '09 earned the distinction in April and will conduct AIDS research in Trinidad and Tobago for 10 months beginning in January.

The Fulbright Program is the largest U.S. international exchange program offering opportunities for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools worldwide.

Lee, an Industrial Engineering major, will assess a computerized reporting system that monitors the spread of the AIDS disease.

"Professionally, this experience will be unparalleled to anything I've ever done before," Lee says.

And her work is critical. The race to contain the HIV/AIDS epidemic is far from over. In 2007, UNAIDS reported 33 million people worldwide living with HIV - with over 18,000 of them in Trinidad and Tobago, two small islands east of Venezuala.

Key to reining in this rampant and deadly virus is managing blood samples and receiving accurate and fast test results. Now that monitoring system has been implemented, Lee will determine if there have been any changes or improvements, or if people have gone back to the old, erroneous ways of data reporting. So far, the system has made a difference: patients typically would wait three days for an HIV confirmation but today that wait is cut in half.

However, there's more to do to increase the system's efficiency. "I'll also be looking at the interaction between the system and the employees," Lee says, "such as the main clinic and the rural clinics, and the employees and the patients to see if improvements still need to be made. A further aspect is assessing the number of employees and determining if that's enough to meet the patient demand."

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