Bradley Wagenaar

Bradley Wagenaar is a recipient of the Academic Year 2014-2015 Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. The award provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional school students with financial support to develop fluency in less commonly taught languages (LCTLs) and expertise in the regions in which these languages are spoken. Every year the Center for Global Studies awards between 12-15 fellowships to UW students. Click here to learn more.

As a PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology, I have been conducting health system and implementation research in Mozambique in partnership with Health Alliance International, a center in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington. My dissertation focuses on assessing the current functionality of the mental healthcare system in Sofala Province, in central Mozambique. That is, I am working to answer the questions of: (1) who is being served by the current system; (2) what mental disorders are being addressed or not addressed; (3) who is at risk for common disorders; (4) are treatments following international evidence-based guidelines; (5) what clinic-level factors are associated with different patterns of diagnoses for mental disorders; (6) what is the epidemiologic profile of suicide attempts or deaths; and (7) what is the status of the availability of essential medicines for mental healthcare. The FLAS fellowship I received from the Center for Global Studies to study Portuguese this past academic year has greatly helped to improve my language skills and allows me to communicate directly with colleagues in Mozambique to further improve care and treatment for mental disorders. Further, the FLAS fellowship has also allowed me to take additional courses in psychiatric epidemiology and cross-cultural mental health which have greatly improved my dissertation and my ongoing work at Health Alliance International.