FHS alumna wins Virchow Prize for cervical cancer study

By Susan Erikson

Health sciences alumna Thando Malambo ('15) has won the 2016 Virchow Graduate Student Prize. The Prize was awarded at the 2016 American Anthropology Association conference in Minneapolis, MN. Her prize-winning paper, "'Worse than HIV': The Political Economy of Cervical Screening in Swaziland" features results from the cervical cancer screening study she conducted for her MSc thesis. 

Thando conducted original ethnographic research at two clinics in Swaziland. A SiSwati language speaker, she collected rich ethnographic data, which she then analyzed with first-rate anthropological theory. Her committee – Profs. Susan Erikson, Marina Morrow, and Vinay Kimat (UBC) – advised her on the research design, data collection, and analysis for the project. Prof. Nichole Berry provided a directed reading of the anthropological scholarship on race and health. During her education at SFU, Thando was supported by a CIHR Fellowship in Population Intervention for Chronic Disease Prevention, SFU's Research Travel Award and FHS' Graduate Fellowships.

An article based on her prize-winning paper is now under review for publication in Global Public Health.

November 2016 was a good month for Thando. She also accepted a job with the Canadian government's International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the premier research arm of Canadian international affairs. She will be working as a Program Management Officer for the Centre of Excellence on Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, Maternal and Child Health Program. 

See related story: http://at.sfu.ca/bCpcQb