In just 2 hours, I leave for 2 months in Malawi! I’m sitting in the airport now endlessly running through my dozens of checklists and to-do lists to make sure I am ready. With all the boxes checked, I have a few breaths to think about what the summer holds.

For the next 8 weeks, I will be working in Queen Elizabeth’s Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi. My main focus will be on the bCPAP device: continuing clinical trials and traveling to district hospitals all over the country to decommission older models. In addition to that, I will be presenting the staff of doctors and nurses with several prototypes of medical devices developed by Rice design teams in the Global Health department. I will be recording their feedback on necessity, usability, and future improvements for each of the devices. The devices vary from a mechanical breast pump rocking chair to an educational diabetes wound care simulator. In the past month, I have been working at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen learning these technologies backwards and forwards. I am impressed with ingenuity of these design teams and am eager to see how the hospital will receive them.

I would like to thank my sponsors, Jim and Linda Hargrove, for this opportunity to further my passion for global health. I am beyond ecstatic to get my feet on the ground in Malawi and witness first hand the real issues facing health in low-resource settings. Bring on the 34 hours of flying, I’m ready!