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Nana Sarkoah Fenny

Biography

Summary: Nana Sarkoah Fenny, 25, moved at age 12 from city life in Ghana to a remote village where tropical diseases were rampant and health care was scarce. The impact of that experience has guided her career goals ever since. She enrolled in a girls' boarding school known for its science education and volunteered to teach her fellow villagers about safe use of drinking water and other health concerns. She then enrolled in Beloit College in Beloit, WI and compiled a 3.86 GPA while tutoring middle school children and starting an African dance group. Nana will attend the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where she will pursue a combined M.D. and master of public health degree.

Biography: When her parents moved from the capital city of Ghana to a rural village when she was 12 years old, Nana Sarkoah Fenny strongly resented the change in her lifestyle. But she found her calling at the oil palm plantation, where she became aware of the cruel contrast between the tropical diseases afflicting many residents and the near-total lack of basic health care. She decided early to take on the difficult challenge of becoming a doctor and using her medical skills to help improve health care for the suffering villagers in Ghana and others like them. She enrolled in an all-female boarding school known for its science education and found her niche. After joining the Junior Red Cross club, she soon was doing field work in nearby villages, emphasizing the need for safe drinking water and the use of saline solutions to prevent dehydration.

Nana was accepted as a pre-med student at Beloit College, majoring in biochemistry and earning such high grades that she was chosen for Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. "The academic curriculum at Beloit has been a source of great satisfaction to me because I have been able to pursue both my interest in the sciences and the arts simultaneously," she writes. She also made service part of her education. She tutored middle school children in mathematics, became a teaching assistant in chemistry, and took a laboratory internship at a Chicago-area medical school, working with low-income Mexican immigrants who lived in the slum-like "Colonias" in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. To her, it was comparable to the public health situation in Ghana. In addition, she worked with elderly women who served as intermediaries with residents with health problems and started a summer camp for children.

Nana intends to earn an M.D. and then pursue a doctorate in epidemiology to achieve her ambition of joining the World Health Organization (WHO) and working for improved medical care in Ghana and other countries with similar issues of diseases, hunger, and poverty. Her role model is a former director of the WHO, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, who used her skills as a physician, political activist, and scientist in advocating for environmental health.

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