About Us

Audrey Nguyen is a 2nd year medical student at the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine. She graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a B.S. in Bioengineering. Audrey loves cooking and eating gourmet foods, craft beer and fine wine, all forms of art and fashion, her family and her Boston terrier, Koby. She lives with her family in Laguna Beach and spends much of her time with her 3 siblings: Rohan (8 years old), Dawn (11), and Ella (14). Audrey is interested in becoming a pediatric reconstructive surgeon, although she knows that her interests may evolve throughout the clinical years of medical school.

Scott Bauer is a 1st year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. He graduated from UCLA in 2009 with a B.S. in Psychobiology and a minor in Public Health. He went on to get his Sc.M. in Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, with a focus in chronic disease epidemiology. Scott loves the outdoors (hiking, biking, backpacking, kayaking, mountaineering, etc), French food and wine, drinking and brewing craft beer, and meeting new people. His parents are avid cyclists and his younger brother, Will, is starting his 4th year at UC Davis, and he is interested in herpetology.


What we will be doing for 6 weeks in Rach Gia (before traveling for 2 weeks):

Project Vietnam Foundation (http://www.pvnf.org/)
Without Dr. Kieu, founder of the Project Viet Nam Foundation (PVNF), Audrey and Scott would not be in Vietnam. Dr. Kieu has provided continuous and extensive support for Scott and Audrey throughout the process of planning their trip. PVNF organizes and leads several medical mission trips to Vietnam each year with an emphasis on pubic health and training to improve healthcare delivery. The focus of PVNF is long-term and sustainable improvements of healthcare in Vietnam.

Kien Giang Stroke Study
Scott was awarded the Rose Traveling Fellowship from the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health this spring to fund a study of stroke among the rural farmers in Kien Giang province. He has worked closely with Dr. Man Nguyen, Kien Giang General Hospital, and Dr. Murray Mittleman, Harvard School of Public Health, to design a questionnaire and to translate it into Vietnamese. Audrey will be using her previous experience in stroke research as well as her Vietnamese language to teach the hospital staff several of the tools used in the stroke study. Audrey and Scott will be administering the questionnaire to stroke patients in the Kien Giang General Hospital while Dr. Man Nguyen will be administering the questionnaire to healthy controls from the community. The goal of the study is to determine which lifestyle and behavioral risk factors are most strongly associated with stroke among this population of rural farmers in Kien Giang, Vietnam. Scott and Audrey will also be establishing a cohort of stroke patients that will be evaluated at baseline and followed over time for changes in functional impairment and quality of life.

The Reading Glass Project (http://readingglassproject.com/)
Audrey and Scott brought 100 reading glasses with them from the US, with amazing support from Jackie Hunsicker, the founder of The Reading Glass Project. They will be giving the glasses to elderly Vietnamese women who use artisan crafts to support their families, but do not have the means to purchase reading glasses. These women often work in poor light which often leads to deteriorating vision. Access to reading glasses can vastly improve their quality of life by allowing them to see the faces of those they love (as well as their beautiful weaves!).

Shadowing
As medical students, Scott and Audrey are interested in observing how healthcare is delivered throughout the world. They will both be shadowing several Vietnamese physicians in the Pediatric and Surgery Departments at Kien Giang General Hospital.