Profiles of 2004 Graduating Students

Joann Kang will continue reaching out to help fight poverty and disease

By Susan Lang

While serving as medical interns in the village of Buluya, Uganda, this past summer, Joann Kang and her roommate and traveling companion, Joyelle Lee, were so appalled that the women and children there had to walk more than six miles to get clean water that they did something about it: They collected -- with the support of the Cornell organization Help Us Stop Hunger (HUSH) -- the $7,000 needed to drill a well that brings uncontaminated water to the surface with a hand pump.

Seniors Joann Kang, right, and Joyelle Lee, both human biology, health and society majors, arrange their "pseudo pharmacy" in Buluya, Uganda, last summer, where they counseled villagers on using medications. Courtesy of Joann Kang

Kang and Lee, who is president of HUSH at Cornell, a faith-based organization that addresses issues of hunger and poverty, have raised the money on campus by running a poker tournament, winning a speech contest, writing grant proposals and spending untold hours on the university's Ho Plaza, publicizing the problem and selling tickets to their fund-raising events. The money will be sent to and managed by the community's Buluya Development Committee.

"I realized that many of the health problems we encountered are preventable and come from a lack of water," said Kang. Both Kang and Lee are seniors majoring in human biology, health and society in the College of Human Ecology.

Kang, who has been interested in medicine for as long as she can remember, worked at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda two summers ago conducting research on an anti-cancer drug. She spent last year as a volunteer medical assistant with Cornell's Gannett: University Health Services taking vital signs, conducting basic procedures and shadowing clinical staff. She also participated in Gannett's outreach program, REACH (Real Education about Cornell Health), providing sex education and free condoms to students around campus. In addition, Kang spent a summer volunteering at the Gay Men's Health Crisis Center in Manhattan.

Since her sophomore year here, Kang also has been spending up to 25 hours a week doing research on campus in a nutritional sciences laboratory on sulfur amino acid metabolism and the regulation of an enzyme, glutamate cysteine ligase. That work is culminating in her senior honors thesis on the regulation of the enzyme in the synthesis of glutathione; deficiencies of this small compound is associated with degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, as well as other conditions, including HIV/AIDS and respiratory and liver dysfunction.

All these experiences should serve her well when she enters the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago in the fall, where she plans to specialize in surgery, with an eye on global issues.

"I'm very interested in science and medicine, but there's so much more than that. Everything is so interconnected. As a doctor, you can't look at a patient and illness as isolated events but need to take a broader social perspective," explained Kang. "I'm interested in connecting health care in developing countries with developed countries, since there are no barriers from disease and infections."

To that end, Kang is seriously considering a dual degree, earning a master's of public health as well as her M.D.