Luke Maillie ‘18

This bio is current as of 2020. 

Luke Maillie studied Physics in Medicine with a minor in International Development. Through the International Scholars Program, Maillie worked with Prof. Steve Reifenberg, researching health systems and access to surgical care in Mexico and Zambia. He also studied health systems for pediatric and cervical cancer patients in Tanzania each summer of undergrad thanks to funding from the Kellogg Institute.

After graduation in 2018, this work led him to conduct research on a Fulbright in Tanzania studying health systems delays faced by patients with cancer during the care seeking process. Additionally, he helped to implement a pilot project focused on supporting women with cervical cancer in accessing treatment by providing lodging, food, transportation, and financial support.

Maillie is now a medical student at Mount Sinai in NYC. He continues to work on researching access to care for cancer patients in Tanzania, and recently worked with Dr. Matthew Sisk to help to create a national scale-up plan to ensure 95% of the population lived within 4 hours of cancer care.

This profile was current as of 2018, when he was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.

I have worked with Prof. Reifenberg since sophomore year researching health systems. For the past two years we focused mainly on writing a case study on the Right to Health program run by Compañeros en Salud, a sister organization of Partners in Health. The case study explores how the program, focused on ensuring rural patients can access complex care (surgical care, cancer care, etc.) came into existence, and how members of the organization are now looking to integrate the program with actors such as other health facilities and the government. Now, we are beginning to work on a case study with the Lancet Commission of Global Surgery and Program in Global Surgery and Social Change at Harvard Medical School regarding the development of a national surgical plan in Zambia. The case study focuses on how the policy was developed and how Zambia is working to ensure their population can access surgical care which remains largely unavailable to the majority of the country.

I have received two Experiencing the World (ETW) Fellowships, one winter break travel award, and a Kellogg/Kroc Undergraduate Research Grant. All of these have allowed me to travel to Tanzania, now four times in total, to conduct health systems research regarding how rural patients access (or more often don't access) complex care. The work I have done with Prof. Reifenberg has proven foundational to my ability to look at these problems systematically, and I am now working on writing a capstone for the International Development Studies Minor on how systems can be used to treat patients needing complex care instead of just one disease.