The Department celebrates resident scholarly achievement in congratulating 4th-year Diagnostic Radiology resident Dr. Kaleigh Burke on receiving a 2018 American College of Radiology (ACR) Goldberg-Reeder Resident Travel Grant, among seven resident recipients this year. In August 2018, Burke received $2000 to support her forthcoming work during a four-week global health elective in Malawi. UNC Project Malawi is a decades-long story of successful collaboration between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Malawi Ministry of Health. It is based on the campus of Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH) in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, with the mission to improve the health of the people of Malawi, through research, capacity building, and care.
Since its 2013 establishment, the UNC Radiology Malawi program (an alliance specific to the Department and UNC’s Division of Radiology Sciences) has reinforced the mission of UNC Project Malawi education and patient care at KCH and at the Malawi College of Health Sciences Radiography Programme. This year, Kaleigh becomes the Department’s third full-block global health resident, and the sixth to travel to Malawi since 2017. Fourth-years Drs Josh Wallace and Malik Mossa-Basha are also on their way to Malawi before year’s end, and we await word of their respective scholarship applications.
As outlined in her scholarship application, Dr. Burke’s goals for her global health block include: 1) working in interdisciplinary team format with UNC Radiology Malawi’s lead radiologist Dr. Brett Murdock and UNC’s lead pediatrician Dr. Elizabeth Fitzgerald on formal pediatric renal pathology didactics and hands-on renal ultrasound scanning with pediatric medical officers; 2) providing consultations and educational lectures for KCH registrars and medical officers; 3) gaining experience with pathologies common to Malawi not often seen in the U.S. (eg, TB, malaria, infectious diseases, advanced presentations of malignancies); and 4) improving differential diagnosis skills, communication skills, and creative thinking and problem-solving in limited resource settings.
In nominating Dr. Burke for this award, Department of Radiology Director of Graduate Medical Education and Undergraduate Medical Education
Dr. Sheri Jordan noted: “All in our Department are very proud of Kaleigh’s commitment to our global health initiative in Malawi. Kaleigh excels in all aspects of educational endeavors, and I am confident her scholarship in teaching, along with her work ethic and professionalism, have positioned her extremely well to pursue her planned interdisciplinary team project at Kamuzu Central Hospital.
We are grateful to the ACR for recognizing Dr. Burke’s accomplishments with a 2018 Goldberg-Reeder Resident Travel Grant. Look for Kaleigh to be featured in forthcoming ACR publications!”
Kaleigh stated: “I’m excited that radiologists all over the country will be able to learn more about Kamuzu Central Hospital and the work that UNC Radiology is doing there to help bring more radiology services to the people of Malawi.”