Yvonne Sarpong
Class of 2005
Thurgood Marshall Academy/ Pen State Univ.
Topic: The Affects of Hepatitis Treatment on Glucose Metabolism
About:
There is so much I can say about my experiences with the Harlem children Society. Since the summer of my senior year in school through out the summer of my junior year in college, I have assisted in various scientific researches in a couple health facilities in New York City . When I first found out in the 12 th grade that I was going to be doing research for the summer I didn't know what to expect. I was assigned to work at the Fanconi Anemia Registry at Rockefeller University where I helped researches with their genetic study by doing various tasks around the office. It was at this facility that I started to develop an interest in the sciences specifically aspects of human genetics.
After my freshman year of college I called Dr Sat and asked him if he had an opening in the program and he did. He placed me at Hunter College in the department of socio-psychology where Dr. Darlene Defour was conducting a study on stress among college students. I realized that I wanted to find out what the main contributors of stress consisted of in college students since I was a college student myself. I took an exam prior to that and received a certificate to become a research assistant in psychology. I was in charge of recruiting participants for the study as well as conducting the actually study. My participation that summer gave me the experience that I needed when it came time for me to apply that concept to some of my psychology course work in my sophomore year in college. I was one in 200 that actually had an experience in my psychology that was able to implement it into my course work which allowed me to do much better in the class.
Throughout my involvement this summer and the lectures that were introduced to the participants in the program, I have been able to decide on the decision to go to medical school after my undergraduate year at Pennsylvania State University . I was involved in an ongoing study at Montefiore hospital in the Bronx with the department of epidemiology and social medicine and the division of infectious diseases. The research team including myself was and is still trying to find the relationship between chronic hepatitis C and Diabetes among individuals co-infected with HIV/AIDS. And if hepatitis C is treated within individuals will their onset of diabetes be controlled as well. The results towards the middle of the study seemed very promising.
Research is something that I have never giving a thought about in relation to what I want as a career. But through my involvement with the Harlem children society and various hospitals and research centers in New York city associated with the program, I feel I am coming close to my career choice. Thanks to everyone that made these experiences possible for me; the Harlem children society, Dr Sat, Dr Darlene Defour, Dr, Arlene Aurebach, Dr Andrea Howard and Dr Jaya Satagopan.