Shreyas Mosurkal is a Spring 2023 Recipient of the Srinivasan Family Awards for Projects in Emerging Markets, run by the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University.
While gearing up for graduation, Shreyas Mosurkal, a fourth-year Health Science student at Northeastern University, has been hard at work leading a research project aimed at improving high-quality emergency care in remote regions of Baringo County, Kenya.
Inspired by his involvement in a summer 2022 Dialogue of Civilizations program in Kenya alongside Professor Richard Wamai, Shreyas returned to Kenya in July 2023 to further his passion for public health in a global setting.
Many research and advocacy efforts have been placed on the mitigation of communicable diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa, however, the need for more efficient emergency medicine response and trauma care has been growing in recent years. In Tiaty, one of the 6 constituencies within Baringo County, Shreyas has been working alongside local healthcare organizations to combat this need by developing a prehospital emergency transportation system using volunteer motorcycle taxi drivers, known as Boda Bodas.
In collaboration with Professor Wamai and the African Center for Community Investment in Health (ACCIH), Shreyas designed a study to address the growing need for emergency medical care in Baringo County, centering his efforts on the continued recruitment and training of volunteer Boda Boda riders as layperson emergency responders.
During his time in Kenya, Shreyas led interviews, surveys, and focus groups with Boda Boda riders and healthcare workers to learn more about the greatest concerns and challenges in meeting existing medical needs in the region. He then partnered with the Kenyan Red Cross and clinicians from the nearby Chemolingot hospital to organize emergency care educational sessions for the Boda Boda riders on basic first aid, CPR, and blood control.
Through Shreyas's coordination with the Red Cross, a cohort of 30 Boda Boda riders underwent training as lay first responders in two different villages of Tiaty. Shreyas also was able to complete pre- and post-training questionnaires among the participants to assess the efficacy of the training and provide each responder with a first aid kit.
Having returned to Boston with data from over 190 layperson interviews and 5 health facility questionnaires, Shreyas has spent recent months scrutinizing the data to form conclusions to guide future initiatives by ACCIH, the Kenya Red Cross, and other stakeholders such as the Kenyan Ministry of Health. These findings will aid these organizations in addressing persistent training needs and establishing a framework for recurrent training sessions to provide ongoing education for Boda Boda riders. Shreyas aims to finalize a manuscript of his findings and submit his work for journal publication following his graduation in December 2023.
