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Pooja Kumar was a 2001-02 Hart Fellow working with the International
Rescue Committee's (IRC) Community Health and Development project in Barda,
Azerbaijan, a few kilometers from the ceasefire line between Armenia and
Azerbaijan. The camps and communities where Pooja worked were home to hundreds
of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs), those who had fled their
homelands in the disputed mountainous regions of Azerbaijan and resettled in
the often inhospitable flatlands of the central area. Her work focused on
comprehensive health assessments, primary health care trainings, and health
education for health workers and community members. While health was her
focus, photography and writing became ways for Pooja to document the lives
of those whom the IRC was working to assist.
Pooja graduated from Duke in May 2001 with a degree in Health Policy, for
which she wrote an honors thesis on war and health and co-taught a course
on international health issues. Also at Duke, Pooja worked for and photographed
with Save the Children in East Timor, UNICEF in India, Mother Teresa's
Missionaries of Charity in India, and in China and Taiwan. She also photographed
with and taught photography to seriously ill children at Duke University Medical
Center and Boston Children's Hospital. Pooja's work focuses on the social aspects
of health and medicine. Pooja is currently attending Harvard Medical School and
in 2003, received a Rhodes Scholarship to conduct a year of research at Oxford
University in England.
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