Christopher Aime

Statement of Purpose

I would like the opportunity to attend the 2019 Winter Brooklyn College Study Abroad

Program in Nanjing, China. I choose this study abroad in particular because China has a

fascinating ancient history and is becoming a global superpower. Since, the Chinese culture and

social norms are complete opposite of western culture, it will bring challenges, experiences that

will help shape my perspective on diversity, cultural sensitivity and worldviews. My goal is to

work for Center for Disease and Prevention as an applied epidemiologist and Global Health

researcher. In simplicity, my role would be to surveillance any health threats that can spread be

transmission. When an outbreak hits an area, an epidemiologist is send out to the area to

investigated with the locals who are affected. In points in the epidemiologist career, they will be

sent abroad to help investigate, and find prevention to reduce the spread of an outbreak. As an

epidemiologist, they must develop skills that improve professional to think globally, improve in

cultural sensitives, understand diversity, and have respect for difference. As a York college

student working towards a career in epidemiology and global health research, this study abroad

program is a gateway to help me develop those previous mention skills and experience needed to

be work internationally proficiently.

I’m interested in taking the course on the history of silk road because of its rich ancient

history and is considered the ancient globalized interconnected trade routes for cotton, ivory,

wool, gold, silver, and horses for silk, teas, salt, sugar, porcelain, and spices between Europe to

Asia, respectively. The silk road trade economy helped revitalized china after many periods of

decentralization during different dynasty period. In modern times, the silk road is still use and I

will be able to see how many different cultures, ethnicities and race are still using the routes to
purchase and sell goods as a way of making a living. Although, the silk road was a passageway

of goods, commodities, religion, technologies between the east and west, it also serves as a

pathway to spread diseases. Researchers such as stated the silk road help spread the bubonic

plague, anthrax, and leprosy between the east and west. As an inspiring epidemiologist, my job

will be to examine how diseases are spread and to find prevention for it. My objective for this

course is to take the history of this course and visit locations around the Silk Road that could

provide me a better understanding on what and how the infectious disease was spread.

For the past 30 years, the CDC and the Chinese government have collaborated on public

health that affect China. The CDC focuses on emerging and reemerging infectious diseases

immunizations, influenza, noncommunicable diseases and global health security. As China is

more industrialized, the country faces an alarming public health problem which is pollution

cause by industrialization. According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, the number one cause of

death is industrialized pollution, and this is in the form of Cardiovascular disease, Neoplasms,

and Chronic Respiratory Disease. According to the New York Times, 1.6 million people die per

year which is approximately 4,400 deaths days due air pollution. According to the World Health

Organization, this air pollution is preventable.

Currently, as stated in the CDC website, CDC and China government are making an

initiative to combat this Public health problem. The Chinese Field Epidemiology Training

Program (CFETP) is a a two-year program, strengthens disease surveillance, applied

epidemiology, and response capacities through a rigorous curriculum and extensive field work

experience that is designed to train China’s future public health leaders. Currently, 248 CFETP

residents have graduated across the country and have conducted more than 2000 outbreak

investigations as part of their training. In 2016, a new, one-year Western FETP was launched to
increase epidemiologic capacity in the Western provinces of China. I want to apply to this

program after I attain my doctorate in epidemiology in the next few years. The China Study

abroad program will allow me to contact the program in person as well as network with Chinese

other Chinese Public Health leaders. I will need to learn Mandarin in order to improve my

network and communication skills and thus, taking the basic intensive mandarin course in

additional to the History of Silk Road course will help me increase in a chance of this

opportunity.

I grew up in Fresh Meadows borderline Flushing where the ethnic/race makeup

comprised large Asian community: China, Philippine, Korean, and Indonesia. I went to

Benjamin Cardozo high school, where there were a large body of Asian students. My father

rented rooms to Chinese exchange students who attended the St John’s University Pharmacy

program. My uncle married a Chinese woman and has three children. The Asian culture and

people has always been part of life but I felt I couldn’t fully connect to them not because my

ethnicity and race is different but because I never took the time to fully immersed within their

culture and learn more about them in order to connect with them. I believe that this trip will

provide the opportunity to fully immersed with the Chinese culture and I feel my experience will

help form better relationships with cousins as well as my neighbors and friends.