Week One: Preparation and Healthy Hearts

Greetings and welcome to my blog! Here I will be chronicling my BASIS Senior Research Project adventures tackling type II diabetes from both a preventative and treatment perspective.

After so many years, I am very excited to finally beginning my official SRP.  If you are curious about my process in choosing my topic, you are welcome to check out my internship blog from last summer, here.  If not, read on. 

For this project I will be interning with two different groups over the next couple of months.

For most of my week I will be at the University of Arizona Medical Center working with a team of doctors and biomedical engineers at iCAMP. This team focuses on how technology and wearable devices can be used to help people dealing with medical complications. I am interested in pursuing the topic of wearable devices in my future and am curious to see them being tested in a medical setting. While I will be generally observing how high tech devices can be used to treat and prevent diabetes, I will also be  involved with specific clinical research on a device used to monitor pressure in individuals with peripheral neuropathy. This last week was spent getting caught up on reading articles and buying books necessary for my research. Next week I will be starting my UMC internship so stayed tuned for updates about that.

One day a week I will also be working with the Pascua Yaqui tribe on diabetes prevention. I will spend a lot of my time with Dr. Apryl Krause and her team at the clinic of the diabetes prevention program, however, I will also be shadowing others in different aspects of the program (home outreach, dietitians, kid's fittest etc.) This last week I was involved with the February "Healthy Heart" initiative aimed at raising awareness about women with diabetes and heart disease. On Friday there was a special event where the program offered free consultations, flyers and cholesterol/blood pressure check ups as well as healthy snacks. It was an honor to work with the women hosting the event and great to see the turn out.

If you have any questions about my project, feel free to reach out.

Have a lovely day,

Xóchitl