AMY MCCAIG  – APRIL 16, 2018

A team of Rice University students hopes a device they developed to train doctors and nurses in developing countries and low-resource areas in the U.S. to prevent and treat cervical cancer will improve the outlook for women with this disease.

From left: Christine Luk, Rachel Lambert, Sonia Parra and Elizabeth Stone. Photo credit: Jeff Fitlow.

Cervical cancer kills close to 300,000 women per year worldwide, with approximately 85 percent of these deaths occurring in developing countries.

Rice students Christine Luk, Elizabeth Stone and Rachel Lambert are senior design students enrolled in the course Global Health Design. Together with graduate student Sonia Parra, they developed a low-cost, interactive training model that mimics a woman’s pelvic region and can be used to practice different cervical cancer screening and treatment procedures. The training model, which was developed at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) and was based on models developed by other teams of students over the past few years (including Christine Diaz ’17, current Rice students Caroline Brigham, Theresa Sonka and Karen Vasquez, and Malawi Polytechnic students Waheed Mia and Mary Mnewa) was created in collaboration with the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

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