A Summer in Uganda

Jessie Lu, C’17, held a summer 2016 internship working at the Philadelphia-based headquarters of the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children (FIMRC). She was assigned to the Bududa district in rural eastern Uganda, where she worked at a non-profit primary care clinic that offers wound care, a lab, a pharmacy, and a maternal and child health ward. The clinic also provides community health educators and runs programs for orphan and vulnerable children and for adults who have tested positive for HIV. 

Along with her work at the clinic, Lu conducted research for her thesis, supported by a grant from the Penn Program for Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism. Because the district was rural, she focused on how individuals there understood their relationship with the state through the government-provided health care system.