Ella Bassett is a rising junior majoring in Biology and Global Health. Keep reading to get to know this member of the wonderful 2025 SRT cohort headed to Kenya in June!
Question: What about your upcoming trip to Kenya are you most looking forward to?
Answer: I am most excited to meet the team members coordinating the mSaada study in Kisumu. After engaging with the Elimisha study from my home at Duke, I’ve found that I have so much to learn about the local burden of disease and how the health system adapts to combat stigma and social determinants of cervical cancer. I can’t wait to meet the research assistants, study coordinators, data managers, and lab technicians who are on the ground preparing to launch the mSaada trial in 12 clinics across the county.
Q: What sparked your interest in global health?
A: I arrived at the discipline of global health through the reproductive justice movement. Access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare throughout the lifecourse is declared a human right but remains elusive for most of the world. When I noticed barriers to this type of care in my community in the form of stigma, financial costs, and geographic distance, I knew that I wanted to learn how experts mitigate the harm of these social determinants.
The ultimate goal of global health is health equity for all. This often means forging partnerships to bring long-proven biomedical interventions to communities that have historically lacked the necessary supportive infrastructure. This problem-solving belongs in the sphere of reproductive health, a frequently neglected element of our collective health.
For instance, maybe a Pap smear is a routine part of your healthcare. Just another element of that awkward OB-GYN appointment you attend out of obligation. As patients, we don’t often consider the many complex systems that get us to that appointment, stock our doctor’s office with speculums, and populate our results on our phones.
First, there’s the expense of childcare, time off from work, and travel that gets you inside the doors. Maybe your friends and family have experienced pap smears and openly shared their experiences to calm your nerves and reassure you that it should not be painful. When you arrive, your clinic has more than enough speculums, brushes, gloves, and drapes to account for its daily influx of patients and conduct your exam on time. The nearby hospital lab receives your sample with well-trained staff, microscopes, and stain to accurately interpret your results. If your result is abnormal, you’ll be notified and perhaps scheduled for another visit involving more medical equipment like biopsy tools and a colposcope.
If any part of this complicated flow is compromised, you cannot properly screen for cervical cancer. That is the reality for many. Engaging with these flawed systems is the heart of global health work. It’s these tough puzzles that the mSaada team engages with everyday in Kisumu and why I am eager to learn from them.
Q: What do you hope to do after graduation?
A: I am an aspiring obstetrician-gynecologist! After graduation, I’ll be applying for medical school and excitedly awaiting my Ob-Gyn rotation. I hope to remain connected to the Center for Global Reproductive Health and continue my involvement in the Elimisha and mSaada studies.
Q: What advice do you have for younger students interested in global health?
A: Read all you can. I have learned so much about the field just by searching for journal articles about global reproductive health. It has taught me the discipline’s core values and some of the important technical vocabulary.
Reach out. As a newcomer to global health, I have grown from emailing the professors who inspire me with their work. A conversation about global health can teach you about deep inequities in the world and equip you with the drive to tackle them. I felt this way after meeting DGHI faculty like Dr. Sharla Rent and members of her team, Getrude Nkini and Dr. Elizabeth Keating.
Keep pushing forward! Engaging with global health demands our long-term attention. It requires cultural humility and a willingness to seriously reckon with the discipline’s history in colonialism. Global health leaders grapple with difficult questions about how to enhance health systems and foster equitable partnerships when unjust power imbalances are too often the norm.
Further, this year has brought new demands on acquiring funding and institutional support. It is easy to feel powerless as a student in the face of some of these high-level challenges to the work of the researchers you look up to. But there are sound reasons for taking heart and action. You belong to a supportive global health community. You and I may not have the resources to support our PIs in the face of funding cuts and what feels like a sweeping indifference to global health. But, we do have our collective resilience and skill. Let’s use these budding skills as scientists, researchers, and communicators to shine a light on why this work is so vital.
Q: What are you involved in outside of your studies? Can you tell us more?
A: As a member of Duke’s Planned Parenthood Generation Action Fund, I write about the national reproductive health landscape and advocate for reproductive rights. In my spare time, I also love going on runs, reading novels, and analyzing Taylor Swift lyrics with my friends.
Q: What is your favorite book or movie and why is it meaningful to you?
A: Whether you are a global health expert or a novice, John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis is a worthwhile chronicle of the world’s deadliest infectious disease and a moving call to action for halting its unjust impact.
I have long been an admirer of Green’s novels, fun YouTube vlogs, and his aptly named online creative community of “Nerdfighters”. My personal favorite of Green’s endeavors, though, is his advocacy for the mission of Partners in Health, including their aim to reduce maternal mortality in Sierra Leone and increase global access to vital medications like bedaquiline (a treatment for multidrug-resistant TB).
Green’s is exactly the type of voice I want to hear in thoughtful reflection on health equity – a voice of understanding, humility, realism, and hope.
Here are some ways you can get involved in PIH and learn more about my favorite author’s work in the fight against TB!
Q: Do you have a favorite quote or mantra that inspires you or guides you?
A: “Never be so kind, you forget to be clever. Never be so clever, you forget to be kind… Never be so polite, you forget your power. Never wield such power, you forget to be polite.”
– Taylor Swift, marjorie