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Josh Wong, ’10, is determined to improve the health of underserved communities around the world.
As a Human Biology student at Stanford, Wong’s self-designed concentration was on public health, global infectious diseases, and social justice.
Wong says he wanted to study health in the developing world and interact with patients in affected communities. He spent a summer in Kenya and Tanzania, working with support groups for HIV-positive adults and educating children about HIV.
For his honors thesis, Wong investigated the immune responses in HIV-positive people to measles, a disease that kills nearly one million children a year in the developing world. He discovered through his research that postponing or denying treatment to HIV-positive individuals weakens their vaccine immunity to measles.
Wong now works at Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Kenya on a Stanford Haas fellowship, learning firsthand about public health and infectious disease research. He plans to pursue an MD/PhD and dedicate his career to eradicating infectious diseases.
