Who I Am

Ph.D. Major: Environmental Health (Epidemiology Specialization)

A Bit About Me

I am Christian Sewor, a first-year doctoral student in the Environmental Health (Epidemiology Specialization) program. I was born and raised in Akplabanya, a rural fishing community in Ghana. As a student, I aspire of becoming a resourceful researcher in epidemiology focusing on understanding how environmental exposures, particularly air pollution, affect non-communicable disease risk, primarily through applying molecular and epidemiological methods to elucidate the potential causal pathways.  Currently, my research focuses on the health impacts of clean household energy use in rural Rwanda, and the effect modifying role of diet and physical activity patterns on the relationship between household air pollution exposure and cardiometabolic outcomes.

During my leisure time, I enjoy reading, listening to music, and playing soccer.

What I Hope To Do

The support received from the Africa Center Graduate Student Scholarship will directly go into supporting my field visits to Rwanda in order to receive practical training in the techniques needed in undertaking field research work such as conducting field data collection (interviews and assessing health outcomes) and carrying out quality control checks on data.

The research which I am involved in is an ongoing randomized control trial that involves 500 households, recruited from the eastern lowlands of Rwanda which seeks to investigate the health impact of substituting traditional forms of household energy (biomass for cooking and kerosene for lighting) with solar power and liquefied petroleum gas stoves in rural Rwanda amongst adults and children.

As part of this project, I will also be undertaking a cross-sectional analysis of baseline data from the project, potentially exploring the impact of household air pollution exposure on blood pressure levels.

My Personal Thanks

I am deeply appreciative of theAfrica Center and School of Global Environmental Sustainability, whose support will be truly instrumental in my research progress. My sincerest gratitude also goes to my advisor, Professor Maggie Lynn Clark, who through her immense knowledge and rich experience continues to guide me in my journey of becoming a resourceful epidemiologist.