Julia Guglielmo
About Me
Hello, my name is Julia Guglielmo, and I am a senior at Laguna Blanca. I applied and was selected for the Science Research Program in my sophomore year, where I explored my interests in neuroscience, psychology, and sports medicine.
During my junior year, I focused my research project on emergency medicine and public health. I shadowed various doctors and was an intern for the Haiti-based nonprofit Remodel Development. Since then, I have been promoted to the board of directors and was inspired to start my own nonprofit called the Education Project. Look below for more of my project details!
Class of '20
Project Overview
Presentation Snapshot
^Julia Guglielmo presenting at the annual STEM Science Research Program presentations held on June 5, 2019 at Laguna Blanca School. STEM students presented to an 85-person audience of Laguna Blanca Board Members, faculty, parents, and fellow students.
Research/Reflection Essay
My Journey Into Medicine:
Exploring the Roles of Doctors and Learning About Public Health in Haiti
I have always been fascinated by medicine, but I never knew exactly what field I liked the best. Though I found my love for emergency care and public health after I attended an emergency medicine camp at Stanford. At this camp, I was able to experience the subfields within emergency medicine such as trauma medicine, disaster medicine, toxicology, and global health. I was also able to learn how to suture, gain my CPR license, and work with cadavers. This camp gave me a lot of hands-on experience as well as knowledge about the fields of emergency medicine as well as what it takes to become a doctor. I knew I wanted to incorporate both emergency care and public health into my STEM project, so I started working with the organization Remodel Development and shadowing doctors.
Remodel Development is an organization based in Haiti whose main goal is to strengthen underserved communities through sustainable options in health and education. My goal in working with Remodel was to make it a non-profit with another organization called Hearthstone Village. Hearthstone Village is an orphanage that provides health, guidance, and care for girls of all ages. Though the problem with Hearthstone Village is that once the girls in the orphanage turn eighteen, social services require that they move out. This is a huge problem because most of these girls have not finished their education yet. This is because the schooling system in Haiti goes until 13th grade and kids are placed in their grades based on skill rather than age. Due to this, most girls who live in this orphanage have not finished high school. Therefore, if these girls were removed from their orphanage, they would have no place to stay, no money, and no way to sustain themselves to finish their education. As a result, Remodel is stepping in and creating a non-profit with Hearthstone Village in order to buy these girls a house so they have a place to stay while they continue to finish their education.
My role in working with Remodel was to learn how to create a non-profit, help devise ways to fundraise, communicate with the girls in Hearthstone Village, and attend board meetings. In learning about nonprofits and how to gain the 501(c)(3) status, I was able to learn about the legal steps and work with the board of directors. The board of directors consists of physicians, healthcare specialists, and the CEOs of Remodel. This was a great experience because I got to work with professionals in both the business and medical industries. In our board meetings, I helped devise plans to fundraise for the house, which consisted of holding a Zumba/singing event in Santa Barbara. In addition, I also helped fundraise money at my school through the student store. I was also able to communicate with the girls in Hearthstone Village through Facebook, and in doing this, I was able to get to know the girls on a personal level. This was helpful because I got to relay a lot of the information I learned about these girls in the board meetings, which gave us key insight in what to provide the girls when we were buying them this house. Lastly, I attended the board meetings that were held twice a month, and in them, I was able to share the things I learned about the girls as well as express my own opinions from a youth perspective.
After the long process of fundraising, working with officials in Haiti, and talking with Hearthstone Village, we finally were able to buy the girls a house called La Maison des Jasmins. This house provides sixteen girls from Hearthstone Village a place to live, eat, and get the guidance they need in order to finish their education. In the future, Remodel hopes to build these girls a permanent house that will be able to support the following generations of girls from Hearthstone Village. I am very happy that I had the opportunity to work with Remodel because it allowed me to gain so much knowledge and experience in working with a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote public health in impoverished areas.
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For my project, I also wanted to focus on the steps it takes to become an emergency care physician, so I began shadowing a variety of doctors. First, I attended a ride-along at Station 17 at UCSB. I spent five hours with the paramedics and firefighters at the station and was able to learn about the pre-hospital system, which is everything that happens before a patient gets to the hospital. I talked to multiple paramedics and firefighters and was able to learn about their jobs as well as the steps they took to get into their fields. This was very helpful because I got to learn about what they majored in and what requirements they needed to have for their jobs. In addition, I was also able to tour ambulances and firetrucks and learn what was on them, who worked on them during a call, and what roles the paramedics and firefighters play. This was useful because it gave me a better understanding of what happened before a patient got to the emergency room because then I shadowed Dr. Richmond, an emergency care physician. I was able to see a wide variety of different patients who either had a minor scratch or had just had a hard attack or miscarriage. I learned that in the emergency room you never know what to expect, so emergency care doctors have to have a wide range of skills. Further, I saw that when a patient comes into the emergency room, they are anxious, distressed, and sometimes unable to communicate, so in order for doctors to see what exactly is wrong with them, they have to administer tests. Due to this, I saw a lot of MRI and X-ray scans. This was really interesting because I was able to see the technology involved with emergency medicine as well as learn how to read body scans. I experienced and learned so much about emergency care and the doctor-patient relationship that comes along with it. Although I enjoyed my time learning about emergency medicine, I also wanted to see the surgery side of medicine.
Thus, I shadowed Dr. Gidney, a cardiologist who specializes in electrophysiology. His job is to assess the heart's electrical system and see if there are any abnormal heartbeats or arrhythmia. Dr. Gidney does this by inserting catheters and then wire electrodes through blood vessels that enter the heart, which measures the electrical activity in the heart. He then maps the heart using a system called CARTO3, which allows him to see the areas in the heart that have abnormal activity. I shadowed Dr. Gidney twice and was able to see about 2-4 surgeries each time. From this, I saw that even though surgery is a controlled environment, there are many unknown factors that a surgeon has to take into consideration. For example, the first time I shadowed Dr. Gidney, the first surgery I watched took six hours because there was a complication with the system he was using. I love the unpredictability of surgery and the team that the surgeon works with. I couldn’t get enough of surgery, so I decided to shadow Dr. Gross, a plastic surgeon. This was one of the craziest shadowing experiences I had. I got to see two breast reductions, liposuction, and a tummy tuck. I liked that plastic surgery was different in the way that the surgeon is not doing surgery to necessarily fix something, but instead, enhance a part of the person’s body. I thought this was a new way to look at surgery and it further increased my love for the surgical environment. Overall, my shadowing experiences were so insightful and interesting and will definitely help me as I continue to think about what kind of career I would like to have.
As I look into the future, this summer I plan on shadowing Dr. Couvillon, an optometrist, and Dr. Ramos, a Gynecologist. In addition, once I turn 18, I also plan to get my EMT license as well as start working as a scribe. A scribe is a person who works in the emergency room and is assigned to a doctor. The scribe follows the doctor around and records all the information about the patient that they will later document into the hospital database. Overall, working with Remodel and shadowing doctors allowed me to gain key experiences that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I learned so much about public health, emergency care, and the surgical fields during my STEM project and I plan on continuing working with Remodel and shadowing doctors as I continue exploring the medical fields.
A BRAIN BOO-BOO
Sophomore Year Research Essay
“20% of students athletes will sustain a concussion during their sports season. 33% of these people will report having two or more concussion in the same year. 39% of people with cumulative concussions show an increase in the possibility of having a catastrophic head injury leading to permanent neurologic disability” (Head Case).
As a child, I partook in many sports that involved using my head, whether it be propelling a soccer ball into the air or falling off a horse. Even with the risk potential injury, especially to my head, I continued to play. Children are not scared of getting injured at the expense of having fun. Though at the same time, safety is a huge concern for young kids because their brains are still in the developing phases, and if harmed, could cause possible neural damage in the future.
The brain is the most vital tool implemented in our body because of the control it has over our breathing, eating, circulation of blood, and movement. The brain is made up of four lobes: the frontal lobe, the parietal lobe, the occipital lobe, and the temporal lobe. Each portion has individual tasks that give humans their personalities and physical behaviors. The frontal lobe controls personality, behavior, emotions, speech, and concentrations. The parietal lobe gives one the ability to interpret words, language, sense of touch, and memory. The occipital lobe interprets color, and the temporal lobe controls hearing and memory.
“A concussion is a traumatic blow to the head that temporarily can cause paralysis to the nervous functions of the brain” (Smayda). A concussion is usually caused by a blunt force acting on the brain from any side. The force the brain endures during this occurrence can affect any one of the four lobes for either a short or long period, depending on how hard one was hit and where they were hit. Motor pathways are apt to be altered with force and can potentially change the way you speak, hear, smell, and touch.
The skull in our heads surrounds our brain, so when the head is shaken to an extent, the skull will shift and hit sides of the cortex. Based on where the impact was received does not mean that is the area affected by force. One can get bumped on one side of their brain and only experience symptoms that pertain to the other side. After the cortex is struck, the exons, a sequence of data containing information for a protein, separate and this is what causes the release of tau proteins. “Tau proteins are found inside the microtubules of the brain and are one of the main proteins responsible for the indicator of Alzheimer’s disease. When the exons break, tau proteins are released and over time the tau changes its shape by clumping together. Due to the proteins clumping, it makes it hard for doctors to examine if one has brain damage on a CT scan” (Science of CTE).
Symptoms of a concussion or disease are hard to read when tau clumps are floating in the microtubules.
It takes a significant amount of time for the tau proteins to get in a large enough cluster that will begin to
damage the brain, so this is why concussion patients need to be monitored for an extended amount of time.
The problem of getting many concussions is the number of tau proteins that will build up after time, giving one the chance of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's or other possible neural diseases such as Parkinson's disease. A study was done at UCLA on ex-professional football players who had previous experience with concussions. “The scientist used a brain imaging tools to be able to detect the chemical marker they created, FDDNP, which the scientist injected into the brains’ of the athletes to be able to determine the number of tau proteins. The scientists then proceeded to perform various PET scans and CT scans and took those results to compare with healthy men's’ charts. The data collected showed that the football players had elevated levels of FDDNP in their brain compared to the healthy men. The players also took MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examinations), and all did worse than the healthier men. The overall verdict was: three players had mild cognitive impairment, one had dementia, and another had normal cognitive function” (First Imaging).
“87% of footballer players are diagnosed with CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), which is a degenerative brain disease found mainly in athletes and military soldiers who have endured multiple cases of neural trauma” (What is CTE). Football players make up the majority of people getting concussions because their support is so heavily impacted by aggression. Professional football players can choose if they want to or don't want to participate in the concussion protocol. For many players, healthcare, such as going to the doctor to get an MRI or Cat Scan is too expensive. Another risk is that if something is found, the player will not be able to play. This is a factor that scares many people away from reporting concussions, but the primary concern is that if one does not receive the proper treatment, their symptoms are likely to get worse in the future.
The NFL (national football league) and the USA soccer association both have extensive protocols that are to be followed, but are they being put to use? Most organizations have the required needs listed on websites and social media, but the public is unable to identify if these protocols are protecting our children or our husbands.
Overall, concussions are a severe problem that is rising in today’s news as a leading cause of neural damage and deaths in many athletes. There are ways to prevent concussions, but the necessary steps need to be followed. Scientists are beginning to develop new brain imaging devices that make it more accessible to tell if one has neural damage or not. These tools are still a far reach into the future, but now we must take the resources we have to protect our brains from suffering. If our brain derails, so does the person. The brain is the almighty force that is every human’s prized possessions, and we should treat it like that. We must teach our own generations and future ones to protect their brains because they are the keys to bright futures and a healthy-happy life.
“87% of footballer players are diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, which is a degenerative brain disease found mainly in athletes and military soldiers who have endured multiple cases of neural trauma” (What is CTE).
SOURCES
“Concussion.” NATA, 31 Jan. 2018.
< www.nata.org/practice-patient-care/health-issues/concussion>
“First Imaging Study Of Concussion-Related Abnormal Brain Proteins In Retired NFL Players.”
Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, 24 Jan. 2013
<www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/255241.php>
“Head Case - Complete Concussion Managements.” Stats on Concussions & Sports - Head Case
- Complete Concussion Managements.
<www.headcasecompany.com/concussion_info/stats_on_concussions_sports.>
“Injury Prevention.” Recognize to Recover.
<www.recognizetorecover.org/injury/#injury-prevention>
“NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee's Concussion Diagnosis and Management Protocol.”
NFL Play Smart, Play Safe.
Smayda, Richard. “What Happens to the Brain during a Concussion?” Scientific American.
<www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-happens-to-the-brain/>
“The Science of CTE.” Concussion Legacy Foundation, 20 July 2017.
<concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/science-of-CTE>
“What Is CTE?” Concussion Legacy Foundation, 30 Aug. 2017
<concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/what-is-CTE>