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Aaron Twaddell, a 2002 graduate of CWRU,
plans to study how privatization in China's economy has influenced
the overall health and medical care of its 800 million rural residents.
As a Fulbright Scholar, he will travel in August to Yunnan, a
province in southwest China where approximately 50 different minority
nationalities live./p>
Twaddell, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, is an
avid traveler who has studied in Japan in high school as a Rotary
Club exchange student, in Israel, to China through a medical studies
course in his junior year at CWRU and to Pakistan to learn about
medical and health problems encountered in the Swat region with
Chaim Weissmann of the Japan America Society.
He made several trips with Weissmann, whom
he calls his mentor, to Pakistan, India, Japan and Turkey. While
he experienced the warm hospitality of the local people on his
travels, "I was painfully aware of the economic inequities experienced
by so many of the people that resulted in poor health," Twaddell
said. He adds that these experiences contributed to his "growing
desire to learn more about improving basic health of less-developed
nations."
Twaddell, fluent in Japanese and Chinese,
will use his language skills to ask Chinese residents about how
they have experienced positive or negative changes in health status
and access to care under privatization. He will look at such factors
as gender, age, ethnicity, income, occupation, environment and
education.
Shifts in China's medical care have gone
from the government-trained "barefoot doctors"-local residents
trained in basic medical procedures-to for-fee services by medical
personnel.
In his research of China, Twaddell has
read about the growing epidemics of AIDS and tuberculosis as a
result of cost-saving moves by doctors reusing dirty needles and
poor environmental living conditions. The 1998 graduate of Chagrin
Falls High School received his bachelor's degree from CWRU in
International and Asian Studies, with a minor in anthropology,
during commencement May 19. His career goals involve working in
some sector of international public health.
While at CWRU, he was named to the Phi
Beta Kappa, Mortar Board and Golden Key honor societies. He also
was a College Scholar in the intensive three-year leadership program;
a founding member and president of Baha'i Club; and a member of
the International Student Association, Intercultural Dialogue
Group and numerous ethic organizations and clubs.
Twaddell is the son of Bancroft and Ruth
Twaddell of Chagrin Falls.
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