When Peace Corps volunteer Katrina Berg encountered countless people in Zambia who didn’t know where malaria came from, she began to understand the importance of global health.

Several years later as a student at the Graduate School of International Studies, Berg wanted to create a forum for people to interact with health-related issues. So last year she teamed up with fellow student Kate Bagshaw and Global Health Affairs Program Director Randall Kuhn to found Santé, a student group whose mission is to bring together people from all over the University of Denver who have an interest in global health.

Although the 2007-2008 academic year is Santé’s first as a registered student group, Berg and other Santé leaders didn’t wait to begin their activities. The group last year hosted a film series, a brown-bag lunch series, and created the first candlelight memorial for World AIDS Day in the state of Colorado.

“There wasn’t anything going on that was just focusing on health,” says Berg. “And with the Global Health Affairs Certificate really starting to grow, we wanted to create a group and then open it up to anyone in the university with an interest in global health.” 

Although working with Santé has been Berg’s primary focus the past year, she has found time for other activities. Over the summer she designed and conducted a research project in the Amazon region of Peru for Centura Health’s International Medical Missions program. The program sends medical teams to Peru, Nepal, and Rwanda to provide basic medical services to local populations. In order to make a more sustainable impact, Centura enlisted Berg’s help to find out what health services communities really needed. 

With the help of Professor Kuhn, Berg designed a study to learn the leading causes of death in Peru’s Amazon Basin. Based on interviews with 130 women in both rural and urban areas, her findings showed that while many developing countries struggle with a high infant mortality rate, Peru’s was actually quite stable. Children were living through their first year of life and facing a diverse array of medical needs moving into adolescence and adulthood. Berg concluded that the need for advanced medical care, as well as creation of a system for accessing that care, were key issues facing the Peruvians she interviewed. 

A native of New Hampshire, Berg received degrees in anthropology and Spanish from Eckerd College in 2000. After graduation she spent four years in the Peace Corps in Zambia from 2001-2005, working to develop fish farms and as a health volunteer. During her time in Zambia, she came to regard health as one of the key and essential elements of successful development.

While pursuing her MA in international development at GSIS, Berg had originally planned to design her own concentration in HIV/AIDS. However, after taking a few classes in global health, the Global Health Affairs Certificate seemed a natural fit. 

“Classes like ‘Health and Development’ helped me see the whole picture of global health, and that HIV was one part of that picture,” says Berg. “The certificate program helped me focus my interests and has given me the research skills I need.”

After graduation, Berg hopes to pursue a PhD in public health and research behavior patterns related to the prevention of HIV/A