Name: Wendy Prudhomme-O'Meara
Position: Assistant professor of medicine and global health
Years at Duke: 1.5
Work location: Eldoret, Kenya
What I do at Duke is: I serve as a visiting faculty at the Moi University School of Public Health in Kenya, and I mentor students, both Duke and Kenyan, on their research projects. I also build partnerships with universities in Kenya for Duke's growing global health efforts, continue my own research into malaria and work with AMPATH (Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare) a large organization caring for patients with HIV. I also return to Duke each year for a short time to teach in the Master of Science in Global Health program.
How I got my job at Duke is: I came to Kenya six years ago as a research associate for the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center. My husband and I love Kenya, but I wanted to get more into an academic setting. That took me to Moi University and eventually to Duke.
When I'm not at work I like to: Make food. We have learned to make a lot of our own food - cheese, bread, yogurt, beer - since we came to Kenya. We improvise and innovate with local ingredients. We make cheese from raw goat's milk and make mango pie instead of apple pie.
To start a conversation with me, someone should ask me about: Malaria. I can talk forever about malaria because I find it such a fascinating disease.
My first paid job was: In high school I worked undercover security at a mall in New Jersey. I was the teenage girl who hung out in the clothing stores looking for shoplifters.
If I could have one superpower it would be: To be able to go without sleep and still function. I'm a good sleeper, but I feel it is such a waste of time.
The skills I bring to my job: My training in engineering. There aren't many engineering Ph.Ds in the School of Medicine. Engineers think about things as systems. When I work in epidemiology and community interventions, I think of things in a very holistic way.
A memorable moment for me at work: When we visited a rural community on an island near Port Victoria, where they don't have latrines, clean water, bed nets, electricity or a pharmacy. Now that we've made contact with that community, we can do something. We have funding to establish a community health worker program there, to bring in rotating nurses. When I finished that visit, I remember thinking, `this is why I'm here.'
A book I just finished reading: "The Bottom Billion" by Paul Collier. It's a fascinating book, written by an economist with practical ideas on how to change things for the billion people who live in the most economically disadvantaged countries in the world.
My favorite movie: Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" because it is so compelling. It was the first movie I saw where I wanted to watch it again and again and get others to watch it, too.
Something most people don't know about me: That I almost majored in Russian Literature in college. In the end, I decided to make Russian Literature my minor. There's a bigger market for engineering trainees than for Russian literature students.