Kristina Jacobsson

Kristina is a rising senior at Harvard College concentrating in History of Science, an interdisciplinary concentration that focuses on the connections between science and society. Kristina is passionate about addressing the social determinants of health and learning about how these inequities exist on a national and global scale. She plans to attend medical school and become a physician who places a high priority on the mental health of her patients. 

During the Summer 2020 Global Mental Health Programs internship, Kristina worked with Dr. Sabrina Hermosilla on several projects analyzing the efficacy of mental health interventions. In one of these projects, she studied how the implementation of Child Friendly Spaces played a role in mental health outcomes following the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal. She also researched Mental Health First Aid training programs and their capacity to teach people to identify and respond to mental health crises. Through these projects, she performed data extraction from a series of journal articles, synthesized data into intelligible tables and figures, and drafted portions of manuscripts for publication.

Kristina found her experience in the GMHP to be immensely valuable. Not only did it provide her with a novel outlook on the adversities that can impact someone’s health, it also allowed her to engage deeply in the research process and to connect with experts in the field of Global Mental Health. She knows she will take forward what she has learned this summer and apply it to her future endeavors – hopefully in medical school and beyond!