About 5,000 miles from the University of Maryland, across the North Atlantic Ocean, Ella Sanvee, a first-generation student getting her master’s degree in health policy and evaluation, spent her summer in Ghana studying the cost effectiveness of two treatment regimens of breast cancer chemotherapy.
As part of the Cancer Epidemiology Education in Special Populations Program (CEESP), which funds student-led research in global settings, Sanvee conducted a summer research project at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi, Ghana.
“It’s always been a passion of mine to make healthcare more accessible, particularly expanding access to care in underserved communities in Ghana and Togo where my family is from," said Sanvee. “I want to make systemic change.”
At KATH, Sanvee studied two different dosing schedules of the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel. She compared weekly versus triweekly treatments schedules by examining both direct medical costs such as chemotherapy expenses and also indirect patient costs such as transportation and lodging. Her goal was to measure the cost effectiveness of the two treatment plans for Ghanaians based on the drugs’ health outcome.
It’s always been a passion of mine to make healthcare more accessible.
Ella Sanvee, MPH '26
Sanvee has learned about resilience and self-advocacy as she navigated challenges common to international fieldwork, including logistical challenges and the need for persistent follow-up. She learned to take initiative, building her own network of local contacts and coordinating key aspects of the project to keep her research moving forward.
Through conversations with family in Ghana and her own research, Sanvee said she learned that while nations such as Ghana have many well-trained health care professionals, public hospitals are often under-funded, providers are underpaid and access to quality care is largely limited to those who can afford private facilities.
After receiving her bachelor of science in biochemistry and molecular biology at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, Sanvee was inspired to pursue a graduate degree in public health at UMD.
“Ella conducted a fantastic study on an important topic. She interacted with clinical and administrative staff in Ghana, taught herself new statistical methods and gained a lot of expertise in cancer treatment and the Ghanaian health system. We are lucky to have her in public health,” Michel Boudreaux, Sanvee’s academic advisor and an associate professor in the SPH Department of Health Policy and Management.
Sanvee is focused on making healthcare accessible for people who have been minoritized, a passion shaped by her upbringing between American and Ghanaian cultures, where she witnessed the stark differences in access to care. “Healthcare is a basic human right,” she said.
“I want to be a voice for the forgotten and the unheard," she said. “The public health community needs to understand that although we are in 2025 and there are major progressions in medicine and technology, there are still a lot of communities that don't have basic healthcare.”
Looking ahead, Sanvee plans on applying to a medical scientist training program to complete both a medical degree and a doctoral degree.
“If I need to go to school for 10 more years to make even two lives in these resource-restrained communities more fulfilling, then I will do that. I will have ultimately changed two lives. This is the level of my commitment to people in resource-restrained communities.”
– Sumaya Abdel-Motagaly