The Colby Echo

Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: courtesy of josh kahane

As a co-captain of the College's Varsity soccer team and an economics major, Josh Kahane '07 thought he had a plan. Upon graduating, the Newton, Mass. native headed to Boston to begin a position working for a market research and strategy-consulting firm. But something was missing. "As time passed during my first (and only) year of work, I realized I wanted and needed something different," Kahane said-a realization that led him to his current position as a Project Coordinator for a pilot program for HIV/AIDS treatment in Uganda.

Spending time abroad was not an idea that came suddenly to Kahane. In fact, he had been inspired to live and work in a foreign country since a close friend from high school enrolled in the Peace Corps the same spring that he left the Hill. He also studied abroad in New Zealand during his junior year, an experience that "gave me the confidence and comfort to leave home and live in a foreign country for an extended period of time," he said.

While his friend was thoroughly enjoying his work in Costa Rica, Kahane and his "other friends working for investment banks or research firms were unhappy." So he started casually searching online for volunteer opportunities abroad, as well as speaking with his cousin about her experiences volunteering in India.

At the same time that he decided to look at opportunities abroad, Kahane decided he wanted to go to medical school, since he had completed all of the Pre-Med requirements on top of his economics major. "I began having discussions with some family friends who were doctors in the Boston area," he said. "I reached out to them and told them I just wanted to learn more about their career path and decisions that led them there." In speaking with the doctors, he also mentioned that he wanted to spend time working in another country. One of the doctors he met redirected him to a colleague who was doing HIV/AIDS research in Africa with the Ragon Institute, part of Massachusetts General Hospital. He spent two months volunteering in Uganda, after which he was welcomed back full-time to help implement a pilot program that the doctor was interested in conducting.

"My primary responsibility is to implement a pilot study entitled 'Real-Time Adherence Monitoring in Rural Uganda,'" Kahane said. The pilot study is part of the doctor's on-going work with HIV-positive participants' adherence to medication. The treatment is called Anti-Retroviral Therapy, and it suppresses the HIV virus resulting in a drastic increase in the individual's life expectancy. The treatment is available to the majority of the population. The doctors currently monitor adherence by using a bottle cap that fits on the participant's pill bottle and records and stores every opening of the pill cap. The adherence percentage is then compared with the manually-conducted count of the participants' pills at the end of the month. "This doesn't guarantee that the participant has actually taken their medication," Kahane said. But he added that "while this is an imperfect measurement, there have been many studies supporting its effectiveness. The success has been impressive and it is much more cost effective than conducting expensive blood tests, which is what they do in the U.S."

Continued...

Page 1 of 3 next >

Article Tools