Research

Professors and students in the Department of Health Studies and many other units across UR are actively conducting health-related research. For information about the research being done by HS professors, visit their profiles on the Faculty & Staff page. Students interested in health research can find more information about research opportunities on the HS Student Research page.

Meet a Health Studies major

For her fall 2021 seminar on global infectious diseases, Professor Kathryn H. Jacobsen, an epidemiologist and global health expert, decided to let the students design the syllabus for the course.  "Richmond students like to be challenged, and they're willing to take their learning in new directions," Jacobsen said.  The students voted to focus on a group of conditions known as neglected tropical diseases, or NTDs. They evaluated all 20 conditions that are currently on the World Health Organization’s list of prioritized NTDs and noticed one glaring omission: loiasis, more commonly known as African eye worm disease. The students spent the semester researching, formulating their argument, and writing a paper calling for loiasis to be added to the WHO priority list. At the end of the term, Dr. Jacobsen submitted the manuscript to The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal with all nine students from the course as coauthors. A few months later their article was published in the journal.  

 “We were given the freedom to design our own project,” said student Bailey Andress '23, “and every member of the class contributed to the research and writing of our final paper. Dr. Jacobsen helped make this daunting task manageable, and I am incredibly grateful that our paper was published and will hopefully start to get loiasis more of the attention that it deserves. As an undergraduate student, I never expected the opportunity to contribute to the field of global health in this way, and I look forward to seeing how the work of our cohort will be used in the future.” Andress is now enrolled in the Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program at Virginia Commonwealth University."  Read more.