Her lifelong goal of becoming a doctor changed after a trip to Peru

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Life changed for María Patrizia Santos during a visit to Peru in 2017. It was not from a mystical experience at Machu Picchu in the Andes or one of the South American country's many other ancient sites, but from interviewing more than 150 caregivers about childhood anemia in the southern city of Arequipa.

María Patrizia grew up in her native Venezuela planning to become a medical doctor. She returned from Peru to Tulane University in New Orleans with a much different idea.

"When I was in Peru, I fell in love with the process of doing research," she said. María Patrizia added a public health major. "My adviser said it was crazy, but I did it." She graduated with bachelor's degrees in neuroscience and public health. "After the trip to Peru, I knew I wanted to do public health."

A second working trip to Peru in 2019 cemented her career choice. This time, it was to study food insecurity and health in Villa El Salvador, a poor district in the capital city of Lima.

While she's no longer on track to become a medical doctor, María Patrizia continues to follow a lifelong passion that did not change when her family moved to the United States and Switzerland then back to Venezuela.

"For me, health is the foundation for everything that you want to do in life," she said. "Growing up in Venezuela, I saw many disparities, and I thought that the most impactful, foundational way to address them was through health."

María Patrizia applied to several universities in the U.S., but Tulane was her top choice. She completed her undergraduate work, then earned her master's degree in biostatistics. She's now in her third year as a doctoral candidate in epidemiology at Tulane's School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. She is the only Latina among 16 students in the program.

"María Patrizia has always been an excellent student, very dedicated to what she wanted to do," her father, José Rafael Santos, said. "She wanted to be a doctor, and Tulane has one of the best pre-med programs. But we supported her when she switched because we knew she would excel."

Dr. M. Pia Chaparro, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health who hired María Patrizia to work on a project in Peru, said she is not only an adept researcher but also quick on her feet in real-life situations.

"When I accompanied her (María Patrizia) and her Peruvian counterpart to collect data one day, she showed me her 'tactic' to keep the dogs away. She had a water bottle ready in case she needed to spray any approaching dogs. It was pretty effective," said Chaparro, who María Patrizia calls a mentor.

María Patrizia divides her time between different academic tasks these days. She teaches observational epidemiology at Tulane, while also taking a class on clustered and longitudinal data analysis.

The bulk of her time, however, is spent on research for her dissertation, which is focused on acute hyperglycemia during hospitalization and the potential risk for cardiovascular disease.

Acute hyperglycemia happens when a person without diabetes experiences frequent episodes of high blood sugar, or glucose.

Hospitals generally did not follow up on the condition once a patient was discharged and blood sugar levels returned to normal, María Patrizia said. But she said her research suggests there may be an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other conditions.

Using electronic health records from the massive National COVID Cohort Collaborative, she has narrowed her scope to around 8 million people in the U.S. that includes those who developed acute hyperglycemia in the hospital.

The dissertation focus is part of her deeper interest in the underrepresentation of marginalized populations in research. The database is a great opportunity to include these populations in determining risk factors, she said.

"I want to see how acute hyperglycemia affects patients, how it interacts with other infections, with sepsis, COVID, etc., and then look even deeper to see how social determinants of health impact this association," she said.

By understanding the complex interactions between acute hyperglycemia and various infectious diseases, she said her research could help doctors keep a closer eye on their patients because of the potentially increased risk for heart disease and stroke.

María Patrizia is a scholar in the American Heart Association's National Hispanic Latino Cardiovascular Collaborative, a program that promotes the treatment and prevention of heart disease and stroke and the elimination of health disparities for the Hispanic population. She's also a recipient of a research service award through the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute that will help her achieve the next stage in her career.

"I would love to split my time between being a professor at a tier 1 research institute in the United States and have a research office in Venezuela or other country so that I can bridge teaching and research," she said.