Azure Onyewu (she/her/hers) is a rising Senior at Stanford University. She is a pre-med student majoring in Psychology with minors in Human Biology (on the Global Health subplan) and Spanish. She has a strong interest in global health research, quality of life interventions, and addressing racial and health disparities, particularly on the African continent. Azure aims to pursue a career in medicine and intends to incorporate global mental health research into her future work.
During the GMHP summer internship, Azure collaborated with Dr. Justin Knox and Christopher Ferraris on a research project exploring sociodemographic and intimate partner violence-related factors affecting women’s vulnerability to HIV, focusing on the Asenze cohort in Kwazulu-Natal (KZN), South Africa. Her role included conducting a comprehensive literature review on HIV-related risk factors and vulnerabilities for women in South Africa in order to support the background section of a developing manuscript. Additionally, she was part of the start-up phase of a sub-study aimed at designing an intervention to strengthen mental health and psycho-social support needs of adolescents and young adults in KZN.
Azure Onyewu is grateful for the mentorship and research skills provided by the GMHP internship program and values the perspectives and connections made with fellow interns. She appreciated learning about community-based research during the didactic seminars and about current mental health literature through the journal club meetings. Azure looks forward to applying these skills in her future medical career, where she hopes to make significant contributions to global health.