I graduated in 2025 from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor with a BS in both Biophysics and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB). Through my clinical work, research, and volunteering in cardiology and cardiac surgery as an undergraduate, I saw firsthand the profound disparities in resources available to individuals living with chronic heart disease—both in Washtenaw County and within my own family abroad.
Coronary artery disease (CAD), in particular, is characterized by obstructed blood flow to the heart due to plaque buildup within coronary arteries. CAD is the second leading cause of death in Fiji, accounting for over twenty percent of total deaths each year. The World Health Organization Western Pacific Region reports disproportionately higher and drastically increasing CAD-related morbidity and mortality among the indigenous peoples of the South Pacific Islands. In recent decades, decline in CAD mortality has been attributed to early diagnosis of coronary occlusion. However, this positive outcome has been unequally distributed to racial groups with fewer barriers to cardiovascular screening. More broadly, social determinants of health (SDoH) are associated with cardiovascular risk factors and outcomes, but this relationship is poorly understood and largely omitted from current CAD risk prediction tools. Concurrently, no literature exists on Fiji’s indigenous people, the iTaukei, in the context of CAD, contemporary SDoH, or their interrelationship.
These critical knowledge gaps about the unique barriers that stifle CAD prediction and prevention among indigenous communities motivated me to apply for a Fulbright research grant to Fiji. Now, alongside Fiji National University and Colonial War Memorial Hospital in Suva, Fiji, my research aims to identify non-medical barriers that influence cardiac health outcomes among the iTaukei and evaluate the predictive ability of the identified barriers as variables in a culturally-informed CAD risk prediction tools.
Alongside the research, I am also contributing to ongoing cardiac-surgery capacity-building efforts in Fiji—particularly as it relates to coronary stenting and coronary artery bypass grafting. My Fulbright year has allowed me to learn directly from Fijian clinicians and has deepened my appreciation for how resource constraints shape surgical decision-making.
I hope that my project will reveal vital areas of improvement in CAD surveillance—ascertaining the social etiology of the condition, factors prolonging diagnosis, and influences on progression across Fiji.
I will apply to medical school this upcoming May in hopes of fulfilling my lifelong goal of becoming a cardiac surgeon. At such a transitional point in my life, the Fulbright program has given me protected time to explore such a pervasive condition and procure meaningful data for future cardiovascular disparities and cardiac surgery capacity-building research I'd like to pursue in the future.
