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Sierra Clark<\/p><\/div>\n
Headline: <\/strong>Sierra Clark on indoor air pollution and academic uncertainty<\/p>\n Subhead: <\/strong>McGill Master\u2019s student tests lifesaving interventions for Tibetan Plateau residents<\/p>\n By: <\/strong>Audrey Carleton<\/p>\n Date: <\/strong>December 1, 2017<\/p>\n Sierra Clark has been reading National Geographic for as long as she can remember. Even before she learned to read, she would eagerly flip through the magazine\u2019s glossy pages to admire its photos. From this young age, she had her sights set on someday working for the publication as an archaeologist.<\/p>\n In the twenty years that followed, Clark had a few changes of heart. When she began her undergraduate degree at McGill University in 2011, she was enrolled with a major in Anthropology. But after sitting through a few convoluted lectures in an introductory anthropology course, she realized the program wasn\u2019t the right fit for her. One meeting with an academic advisor later, she settled on a major in Geography, and swiftly fell in love with it. Upon graduating in 2015, she swiftly enrolled in a Master\u2019s Program in Epidemiology at McGill, which she is completing now. All the while, Clark continued to read National Geographic religiously.<\/p>\n So two decades of continuous reading later, when Clark was awarded a grant from National Geographic to funder her Master\u2019s research, she was over the moon. She had, in some way, achieved one of her childhood dreams.<\/p>\n \u201cI had this moment […] where I was like \u2018Wow, this is so funny, I am here where I wanted to be when I was like five years old, but I got here through such an odd way,\u2019\u201d Clark said. \u201cLife has this weird way of coming around full circle.\u201d<\/p>\n Clark\u2019s National Geographic award sits on her CV alongside a slew of other accomplishments. It sits next to three academic papers she had published as an undergraduate Geography student at McGill, and a long list of honours, scholarships, and awards.<\/p>\n After all of these successes, Clark is just steps away from submitting her Master\u2019s thesis to the university. Under the supervision of Dr. Jill Baumgartner at the Institute for Health and Social Policy, Clark has spent the past two years studying the cardiovascular impacts of indoor air pollution and the success of improved cook stove interventions to reduce exposure to pollutants.<\/p>\n Clark worked with a team at the Baumgartner Research Group to conduct this research on communities in the Tibetan Plateau. In this area, it\u2019s common for people to cook indoors with traditional stoves that burn solids or biofuels such as wood and coal, emitting smog at levels that threaten their cardiovascular health. Alongside engineers at Tsinghua University (Beijing), Clark and the research team set out to identify new stove and fuel combinations to improve indoor air quality\u2014and in turn, health and longevity\u2014for village residents. The various aspects of her research combine skills and knowledge from multiple fields, and for Clark, this keeps things interesting.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at [intervention] adoption, [\u2026] the impact on air quality, and [\u2026] the impact on cardiovascular health,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThose are the three themes that I\u2019m interested in, and those are the three themes that frame my thesis [\u2026.] It\u2019s highly interdisciplinary, which I love. I get to be a behavioural scientist for the adoption lens, I get to be an environmental health scientist for the air pollution lens, and I get to work with instruments and patients [to test] cardiovascular health.\u201d<\/p>\n At the crux of Clark\u2019s research is the idea of environmental inequality. The Tibetan communities that Clark works with are unfairly vulnerable to the effects of pollution considering their emission levels.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s often the poorest and most marginalized politically and socioeconomically\u2014and all factors that create marginalization\u2014that are often the most exposed to environmental risks,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI think this is a huge environmental injustice because half the world\u2019s population, mostly in low and middle income countries […] are exposed to high levels of air pollution every single day. Indoor air pollution [is\u2026] something that the global community really needs to come together and tackle because it impacts so many different facets of society.\u201d<\/p>\n The research team conducted five rounds of data collection for this longitudinal project: Two before introducing the intervention, and three afterward. Clark\u2019s research has taken her into the field several times, where she\u2019s conducted surveys and interviews with members of local villages exposed to indoor air pollution from cook stoves. She uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods for both collecting and analyzing her data. To Clark, using mixed methods is essential to telling her subjects\u2019 story completely and honestly.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you\u2019re working with vulnerable populations, you are taking something from them,\u201d Clark said. \u201cWhat are you giving back? You\u2019re advancing your career, but what do they get out of it? I think working with <\/em>them and spending time with them for me has at least helped me continue keeping them in mind as I\u2019m writing the research for them <\/em>and not just for me<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n As Clark finishes up her research, she\u2019s turning her focus toward figuring out what to do next. Despite the passion she holds for her research, she remains cognizant of the possibility of getting trapped in academia for too long, and she still grapples with an uncertainty that\u2019s reminiscent of her days picking a major as an undergrad. But this time, Clark has learned to trust herself, and has taken a leap of faith into applications for PhD programs.<\/p>\n \u201cI get up and I\u2019m excited to get on my laptop and look at data,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI do feel uncertainty a lot of the time […] But I don\u2019t think you should ever make decisions just based off of fear. I think those are always the wrong decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n To learn more about Sierra Clark\u2019s work, visit her profile on the Baumgartner Research Group site here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Today we have a guest student post, originally submitted as a class assignment for Communicating Science (CCOM 314). With support from Diane Dechief, Faculty Lecturer at the McGill Writing Centre, we will be sharing more noteworthy student writing right here … Continue reading
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Audrey Carleton is a U4 Arts student pursuing a Joint Honours Major in Sociology and Environment with a minor in Communications. She currently works as a Managing Editor at\u00a0The McGill Tribune, where she edits News and Lifestyle pieces. In her spare time, she enjoys long-distance running, reading the autobiographies of female comedians, and drinking at least\u00a06-8 cups of coffee per day in order to be able to do all of these things at once.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"