The summer Accord magazine featured an article on Allie Reichert A'14, who recently spent a year in Ecuador studying indigenous women's access to healthcare. Reichert recently moved to Washington, D.C, where she is working for Project HOPE, a global health non-profit that focuses on health issues in developing countries. She provided this update:

What are you doing at Project HOPE?

Project HOPE is a global health non-profit that focuses on health issues in developing countries. I'm working on their peer-reviewed journal, called Health Affairs. The journal’s aim is to publish academic research on health and connect it with policy makers who can put it into practice. It focuses on both domestic and global health policy, looking at things like system change, quality of care, access to care, health care reform, social determinants of health, and lots of other pertinent topics currently being discussed on the national and global scale. I'm in a coordinator role on the journal, so I've been working on a host of different projects so far.

Are you still thinking about grad school?

Yes! I'm hoping to apply to grad school in the next year or two. I'm still not sure if I want to pursue a master’s in public health or a more research-oriented route, with a PhD in medical anthropology. I think working at Project HOPE in health affairs will help me discern whether the policy or research side is more interesting for me.

Where do things stand with your Fulbright presentation? Any updates on your work with the Ecuadorian government?

I am done with my paper, pending final edits from my professor, and then I will be submitting it to a journal for publication. In relation to my work with the Ecuadorian government, they have agreed to give funding to Amupakin (the midwives' clinic in Archidona, in the Amazon region) to fund transportation into rural communities for the midwives to run promotional programs about traditional medicine and midwifery. This was based on the presentation that I gave to the government in May. AND With money from a fund that I helped create by redesigning their finances and setting up a donation fund for tourists and volunteers, Amupakin will also begin a pilot program in October, which will sponsor 20 pregnant women from surrounding rural villages to receive free prenatal and birth care. This will allow them to begin analyzing the impact of their health care on women when cost is no longer a burden. Hopefully, I can help them analyze some of this data once they've collected it. Both of these were policy action items I suggested and presented based on the research that I collected. Very exciting!