Kayan Clarke was born and raised in Jamaica. She is a fourth year PhD Public Health student in the Environmental and Global Health Department. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) and received her MPH from the University of the West Indies, Mona (Go Pelicans!). Her research is centered around how air pollution can affect children’s health in East Africa, more specifically the effect that PM2.5 has on height-for-age in children under five years old.
She was awarded the Research Abroad for Doctoral students grant from the UF International Center to conduct her work in the capital city of Uganda, Kampala. During her time in Kampala, she collected data on air pollution levels inside and outside of residents’ homes to compare them to calculated estimates. She found that levels of air pollution were above the recommended WHO standards and as such they are more vulnerable to various health effects.
She is currently working on completing her studies in summer 2023. After which she plans to continue working in Global Health with her skills in health impact assessment, and environmental epidemiology. She hopes that her work will impact policies which can improve the health outcome of the most vulnerable in the global population.