Her Campus Emory (HCE): What is your involvement with Emory Undergraduate Global Health Organization (EUGHO)?
Laura Santangelo (LS): I’m a freshman representative currently, and next year I will be serving as treasurer.
HCE: How did you get involved with EUGHO?
LS: I just happened to go to the speaker at the beginning of the year about Ebola and found the topics and dialogues they engaged in to be super interesting so I decided to apply for a position and was lucky enough to get it.
HCE: What is the mission of EUGHO?
LS: Our mission is to try to inform the Emory population about current global health issues, while at the same time connecting them to specialists who have personally dealt with the issues. After all, the most pressing challenges to global health are not biological and technical, but rather social, economic, and political and we do our best to help increase this awareness.
HCE: What sparked your passion in global health?
LS: I’ve always been interested in health and medicine but I really think my interest is global health comes from being at Emory. We are at the center of a lot of key changes that occur in global medicine and when you meet people and hear about the struggles with health globally, you understand their passion and cannot help but want to make a difference as well.
HCE: What is one of EUGHO’s greatest accomplishments? Challenges?
LS: I think our greatest accomplishment is the merit of the speakers that we get to speak. They are super interesting and incredible people who have devoted their lives to help others. The biggest challenge is trying to get people engaged. Everyone here is busy and has a million things going on at once so it can be a difficult to get them to come hear our speakers or participate in our fundraisers.
HCE: How can students get involved on campus?
LS: Students can get involved by coming to our events. We actually have one coming up on April 24th called Yoga on the Quad. Its $5 to attend and all proceeds go towards ending violence against women and children. Applications will also come out in the Fall for certain exec positions so everyone who is interested should apply!