Abigail Williams is a Spring 2024 recipient of the Srinivasan Family Awards for Projects in Emerging Markets, run by the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University.
In the chilly pre-dawn hours, while most of the Pokot community slept, a fourteen-year-old girl was wide awake, laboring for over 30 hours with no progress. When traditional methods had failed, two women from the village supported her on either side and began the hour-long walk to the nearest health facility. Approaching the “24-hour” hospital, the girl felt a surge of relief—only to find it empty with no clinicians in sight. Determined, the women took matters into their own hands to help deliver the baby.
Forty-five years later, the woman still suffers from that day. The well-intentioned birth attendants, lacking proper training, accidentally cut through her FGM scar, causing an obstetric fistula. Without access to proper maternal care, her injury went undiagnosed and untreated for nearly half a century.
Stories like this one encapsulate the reality of rural healthcare for many women in pastoral communities in the North Rift Valley of Kenya. With support from the Center for Emerging Markets' Srinivasan Family Awards program, Abigail Williams, a fourth-year Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology student at Northeastern University, is fighting to eradicate preventable injuries like obstetric fistula in partnership with a team at the African Center for Community Investment in Health (ACCIH).
The range of challenges that impact access to quality medical services and overall health outcomes for rural communities include limited access to facilities, transportation and geographical barriers, and health education and knowledge gaps. For the past five months, Abigail has been administering qualitative research to identify the knowledge gaps and formulate solutions to ensure immediate and thorough healthcare access for women in Tiaty East and West in Baringo County, Kenya.
Abigail has developed an interpretive phenomenological study through in-depth interviews (IDI), key informant interviews (KII), focus group discussions (FDGs), direct field observation, and literature reviews. This study will provide critical qualitative context behind the quantitative data that NGO's and other aid-based organizations in the area depend on, to help them make decisions on how and when to support certain communities in need with a more holistic understanding of residents' needs and contexts. While in Kenya, Abigail has also been partaking in multiple mobile clinics hosted by ACCIH as well as fistula sensitizations and county-wide research disseminations.
The working title of Abigail's research project is “The Effects of Culture on a Community's Approach to Maternal and Household Health in the Context of a Multi-Disease Burden on Women: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of a Pastoral Society in Tiaty East Sub County, Kenya.” As her data collection period wraps up in late November, she will go on to summarize her findings in a manuscript for publication.
Upon returning to Northeastern, Abigail plans on presenting her work at the Peak Experience Awards and the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 2025. She will bring the knowledge gained from this experience with her as she continues in the field of public health to educate those and encourage further attention to neglected areas of maternal care.
