Graduate garners Huntington Award to help improve maternal health in Ethiopia
The Samuel Huntington Public Service Award allows graduating college seniors to pursue one year of public service anywhere in the world.
Northeastern student Blen Yohannes always knew she wanted more than the “traditional” pre-med path — shadowing someone in the medical profession, taking the entrance exam known as the MCAT, finishing medical school, then residency and then specializing in one area.
A “transformative” internship at the Ministry of Health in Ethiopia confirmed her desire.
Now, thanks to a Samuel Huntington Public Service Award, which allows graduating college seniors to pursue one year of public service anywhere in the world, Yohannes has a chance to return to Ethiopia and develop places for new mothers and their children to stay when they travel for healthcare.
“I had initially come into my internship with just wanting to learn and leave being a better-informed person and future public health professional,” said Yohannes, who has Ethiopian ancestry and visited the country several times as a child. “That it kind of snowballed into an actual project [with the Huntington Award] and a tangible way to give back, I think is the dream, really.”
Yohannes graduated from Northeastern in April with a bachelor’s degree in health science and a minor in global health on the pre-med track.
She wasn’t exactly sure how to expand beyond the typical pre-med track until progressing through Northeastern’s health science curriculum and learning how “interconnected health really is,” she said.
“Health is worldwide, it is political, and it is inescapable,” Yohannes said. “You can never really isolate healthcare alone.”
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A health administration and policy course inspired Yohannes to apply for an internship with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health’s maternal health team for the summer of 2025, and Yohannes received a Srinivasan Family Award for Projects in Emerging Markets, which offers students an opportunity to pursue a project that addresses pressing problems in one or more emerging markets around the world in a novel and/or innovative way, to support her experience.
As an intern and as part of a larger project to identify and respond to maternal deaths in Ethiopia, Yohannes traveled to hospitals throughout the country to collect information on maternal deaths due to sepsis. She also shadowed doctors at “pretty much every single public hospital” in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, as well as at several private hospitals.
The contrast between public and private hospitals when it came to available resources was stark, Yohannes said. For instance, she said the staff and providers in public hospitals would construct makeshift water bottles and pool their own limited money together to get patients the medications they needed.
“Seeing all of that from different angles — from the front lines all the way to policy — has just been a great inspiration,” Yohannes said.
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She was inspired to return to Ethiopia several times over the last year, collaborating with the nonprofit Global Health Systems Empowerment Network (GHSEN), which brings American students on global health learning experiences, to organize trips and raise money for hospital supplies and needs.
During a trip this winter, a staff member at one hospital asked Yohannes to come with her.
“She brought me to this space that was lined with beds in a random corner, and there were a bunch of mothers and children everywhere,” Yohannes recalled. “I was really confused about what I was looking at.”
The staff member explained that pregnant women coming from rural areas and the outskirts of the capital to deliver, often cannot afford anywhere to stay in the city — especially if they have other children with them. If their newborn was sick and undergoing care in the pediatric or newborn intensive care unit, the women also needed a longer-term place to stay. The hospital was able to provide beds, but little else, the woman said.
“These women often don’t have access to very basic goods and services like menstrual pads, soap, showers, things that are basic human needs,” Yohannes said.
So, Yohannes proposed creating a space where mothers traveling to the hospital can not only have the physical goods they need for a stay, but also be connected with health education and counseling services.
This will also “go a long way,” said John Olawepo, associate clinical professor of public health and health sciences who helped Yohannes “fine-tune” her proposal, in reducing hospital-acquired infection that a patient can develop during a hospital stay, especially if it’s an extended stay.
“When the babies are now released from the clinic, at least the mother is healthy enough to take the baby home, and we are not having two people be admitted instead of just one,” said Olawepo, who taught Yohannes in a global health class.
The $30,000 from the Huntington Award will support Yohannes’ efforts in Ethiopia. Yohannes will also work with partners of GHSEN and contacts she established during her internship. She is scheduled to leave for Africa at the end of May.
“[Yohannes’] enthusiasm, dedication, and willingness to help other people is absolutely what shone through,” said Jennifer Huntington, chair of the Huntington Award board and wife of the late Samuel Huntington, the namesake of the award and a businessman who became committed to public service after teaching science in Nigeria. “In all projects — whether in education, healthcare, public policy, etc. – what’s important is that they empower people — it’s not to give a handout; it’s giving a hand up.”
Yohannes praised Northeastern for preparing her for such an opportunity, emphasizing the university’s focus on experiential learning and on empowering individuals to be creative and to think globally as well as teaching her the concepts that she will apply in Ethiopia.
Putting all of what we’ve learned into practice is going to be so interesting and something that will inform the rest of my career,” Yohannes said.
