USA: New York City, The Fernandez Lab
Mentor: Cristina Fernandez, MD, MPH, FAAP
Research opportunities available:
Summer Research Projects, Scholarly Projects, and Research Year
Thematic Research Areas:
Maternal and Child Health, Nutrition and Food Insecurity, and Social Determinants of Health
Global Pop funds students from the following CUIMC Schools at this site: VP&S and MSPH
Language requirement: No but conversational Spanish skills would be helpful
Potential activities that could be carried out by students at this site:
Literature Review, IRB Development, Surveying, Data Collection, Data Analysis (Qualitative and/or Quantitative), and Manuscript writing
About Projects with Dr. Fernandez in 2024
Title: Prenatal and early life adversity, nutrition, and health behaviors and effects on child health and development
Project #1: Food insecurity, milk and complementary food eating practices, and early child growth (using available data from ongoing COVD-19 Mother-Baby Outcomes Study)
- Student Role/Deliverables: literature review, identifying variables from available data for use in analysis, data cleaning and coding the variables needed using the codebook, calculating descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, frequencies) for the variables
Project #2: Maternal taste and smell changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and associations with infant milk and solid food feeding practices (using available data from ongoing COVID-19 Mother-Baby Outcomes Study)
- Student Role/Deliverables: literature review, identifying variables from available data for use in analysis, data cleaning and coding the variables needed using the codebook, calculating descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, frequencies) for the variables
Project #3: Partner/support person perspectives on newborn human milk and formula feeding
- Student Role/Deliverables: finalizing questionnaire, assisting PI Fernandez with updating the existing IRB protocol with the revised questionnaire, working with Fernandez Lab members on study participant enrollment on the Postpartum Unit-Newborn Nursery of the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital and on administering and collecting completed questionnaires from enrolled participants. Depending on the amount of time the student is assigned to my lab, the student can also participate in data entry, data cleaning and coding, and literature review for the manuscript
Student Participation: Remote, Hybrid, and In person opportunities
Number of Students: 2-3