Jennifer Staple
Jennifer Staple recently completed her undergraduate degrees in biology and anthropology. During her undergraduate career she created a unique course on the anthropology of vision and eyeglasses, with Barney Bate. She studied “classics in ethnography” with Rebecca, and wrote an honors thesis about a leper colony in Hawaii, and their particular history of collective organization for basic social and medical needs. That paper won the undergraduate prize from the Society for Medical Anthropology for that year. Also during her undergrad career, Jennifer founded the national health nonprofit “Unite For Sight” which has grown in its international reach and enabled her to apply many of the concepts about culture, health, medicine, and vision that she studied. Unite For Sight® is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that empowers communities worldwide to improve eye health and eliminate preventable blindness. As Nicholas Krystof put it on January 27,2008, has rapidly “ballooned” in scope: it entails chapters in North America, international eye care outreach programs, and an annual global health conference. Unite For Sight has trained more than 4,000 volunteers who work in their local communities and abroad to provide eye health programs for those without previous access and has provided eye care services to more than 600,000 people worldwide. It embodies what MD/Anthropologist Jim Yong Kim, former WHO director for HIV, calls “bridging the gap in implementation of Global Health.” Broadly recognized as a remarkably effective young leader in building public will around health issues, Jennifer has taken time off both to teach in local Connecticut schools, and to build her nonprofit organization. She is now enrolled at Stanford Medical School., where she continues to direct “Unite for Sight” events and outreach.
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