In January, Truman HES grad Katie Stark (HLTH ’12) was named head of the Community Development Department at La Isla Foundation in Nicaragua, where she has been working for the past year. She has been working on pinpointing the exact cause of the Chronic Kidney Disease epidemic among sugarcane workers and aiding the victims. Other projects include working on an endless number of educational projects for our community, a legal framework investigation with our Human Rights Department, a health education/intervention project with a university coming down in August, and a huge project to bring potable water to the rural community by next January with Engineers Without Borders.
Katie said “It’s all been a huge amount of work, but a lot of learning opportunities for me as well. I came down to Nicaragua one year ago today, pretty amazed with how much I’ve learned and how much the foundation has changed since! We’re growing quickly, to the point where we can see the end of our goal finally, ready to publish studies and start the intervention phases. Pretty exciting actually!”