Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Pilot funding from the Hermalin Scholars Fund will allow Emily Treleaven to test a new type of data collection in the Chitwan Valley Family Study. Treleaven will collect information about respiratory illness and diarrheal disease in early childhood, and analyze how the frequency and duration of children’s illnesses vary by their family’s circumstances. However, it can be very difficult to collect reliable data about children’s illnesses over time, so this award will help identify how we can collect this kind of data in a way that advances sciences without overburdening families. Understanding how persistent poverty affects young children’s infectious disease risk is critical for informing strategies to help the most at risk children get to healthcare quickly when needed. The results of this study can inform children’s healthcare in Nepal and other countries, and help health systems and programs make healthcare more equitable for all children.

Emily Treleaven is a Research Assistant Professor at the Institute for Social Research, where she is affiliated with the Survey Research Center and the Population Studies Center. Trealeaven studies health and health disparities in early childhood in Asian and African settings, including through the Chitwan Valley Family Study in Nepal, a long-running study of households in rural Nepal jointly led by the University of Michigan and our Nepalese collaborators.