Dodie Arnold, MSPH, is a first-year PhD student in Epidemiology at the University of Washington, Seattle. Recently, Arnold completed her Multidisciplinary International Research Training Program fellowship. She says it changed her life.

Arnold was drawn to the program, which is supported in part by funding by the NCMHD Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training Program, for a number of reasons:

• Working with local and U.S. mentors
• Involvement from beginning to end in the design, collection, analysis, writing, and publication of research
• Becoming part of the community where the research is being conducted
• Museum visits and historical discussions
• Opportunity to build on concepts learned in the classroom through experience gained in the field
• Language immersion

Arnold spent 12 weeks in Ethiopia researching gender-based violence. Specifically, she and her colleagues wanted to assess the prevalence and determine the risk factors of gender-based violence among female college students in Awassa, Ethiopia.