Student Spotlight – Lauren LaMonica

A first-generation college student in the Yale School of Public Health’s 5-year BA/BS MPH joint program, Lauren LaMonica is driven to make the most of her time at Yale. While she elected Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and pursued an interdisciplinary course of study in Global Health as an undergraduate, she nearly studied Classics. That foundation in Latin, she says, honed her ability to dissect issues and develop more nuanced and nonlinear approaches to research. A class in global health methods and ethics with Professor Leslie Curry sparked her interest in public health.

“Global health tied my interests together in a way I didn’t anticipate,” said Lauren. Working with a retina specialist at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Boston, she assisted in the development of an illuminated night therapy mask for patients suffering from diabetic macular edema. In comparison to traditional therapies and surgery that cost upwards of $10,000, light masks are quite inexpensive to manufacture. Questions surrounding cost and access encouraged Lauren to consider the implications of lower-cost therapies for chronic conditions in under-served settings.

Now in her fifth year of study, Lauren is in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. As a Downs International Health Research Fellow, she worked this past summer with the Samoan Obesity, Lifestyle and Genetic Adaptations Study Group led by Assistant Professor Nicola Hawley in Apia, Samoa. Lauren’s work involved implementing a remote eye screening program among high-risk patients with diabetes using the PanOptic iExaminer System, an imaging device that attaches to an iPhone. While this research combined her clinical and public health skills, Lauren notes that the most important aspect of the work was not the data, but rather understanding what makes the people of Samoa who they are.

As a graduate researcher in the Rothman Lab in the Department of Cell Biology at the Yale School of Medicine, Lauren has added an additional layer of focus that has allowed her to more closely understand the fundamental cellular mechanisms at play in protein trafficking and disease. This intersection between clinical, laboratory and public health perspectives has tied together questions she has towards influencing change. In addition to expanding her perspective, Lauren is excited by how the personal interaction embedded in public health methods adds richness to the pursuits of better health outcomes.