Hello! My name is Rebecca Muwanse a.k.a. Yogha and I graduated from Wellesley College in 2012 with a Biological Sciences major. I joined the lab my sophomore year as a Mentoring in Science Scholar and am very interested in the mode of action of hormones. I have been interested in research since I interned at Makerere University- John Hopkins University (MU-JHU) Research Collaboration back in 2007. This desire to be a part of addressing the unanswered questions in science was propagated during summer when I interned at the Uganda Case Western Reserve University (Uganda-CWRU) Research Collaboration Immunology lab.

Previously, I worked on a project in collaboration with Dr. Roberto Melcangi's Lab, that seeks to investigate the coexpression of progestin receptors with steroid receptor coactivators in the rat sciatic nerve.

I am a second year at St. George’s University school of medicine (Class of 2020) as a Global Medicine Scholar (the scholarship sealed my desire to come here) and preparing to sit my Step 1 this summer! Excited to be starting rotations in the fall!

As a Keith B. Taylor’s Global Medicine Scholar, I did my first year of Basic Sciences Newcastle, UK, (our school has a joint program with a local university) so that was exciting!

Along with learning all the basic sciences of medicine, I have taken some unique opportunities as part of the Global scholars program.

The first was a Global selective in the UK and Grenada learning about their health care systems and the specific successes & challenges they face.

The second was a shorter summer selective in Kenya where I looked at health delivery in different socio-economic and cultural contexts in Kenya. The most interesting was looking at healthcare systems serving nomadic Maasai in southern Kenya! It was interesting to see how cultural interpretation of medicine is often an ignored yet vital part of the discrepancy in healthcare. Mirroring that with the socio-economic and racial discrepancies in the US was extremely interesting. Seeing parts of Kenya I did not know existed and grappling with my own sense of “other-ness” within the country that raised me was also an important journey for me. I guess it reminded me that I will always need to adopt the role of medical anthropologist, willing to unlearn my heuristics and take on the role of student,  even in a place that seems familiar.

So my basic sciences years have also afforded me a unique insight into the translation of western medicine in a plethora of contexts.