General Surgery Resident wins Friedman Award for Scholars

Shahrzad Joharifard is a graduating general surgery resident with a long-standing passion for global health. Shahrzad will use the Friedman Award to engage in two complementary educational opportunities that will enhance her ability to address the enormous global burden of surgical disease, which is estimated to account for up to one third of global deaths annually. First, she will enroll in the summers-only Masters in Public Health program at Harvard, where she will work with scholars at the forefront of the burgeoning fields of global surgery and global health delivery. Public health training will give Shahrzad the educational foundation to design and conduct population-based research to better understand the burden of surgical disease in Africa, as well as to craft effective interventions to address this neglected public health crisis. Second, Shahrzad will help Partners in Health, a non-government organization, build a comprehensive, inclusive, and cost-effective surgical program at JJ Dossen Memorial Hospital, the primary referral hospital in Maryland County, Liberia. Simultaneously, she will function as the sole surgeon for all of eastern Liberia—and one of only a handful in the whole country. Upon return from Liberia in July 2018, Shahrzad will start a fellowship in pediatric surgery at Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Sainte-Justine in Montréal. Her ultimate goal is to balance an academic practice as a general and pediatric surgeon with humanitarian service, education, and public health research in the developing world.