Eric A. JohnBull

As an undergraduate, Eric JohnBull settled into the hard-science curriculum that is conventional for pre-med majors. As his perspective broadened to include social determinants of health, he promptly declared a second major—social thought and analysis. He designed a capstone project that examined racial disparities in the incidence of tuberculosis in St. Louis. After working for a local nonprofit that provided housing for people affected by HIV/AIDS, he served in the Peace Corps in rural Kakoro, Uganda, where he and his wife helped establish a free HIV-testing resource and a fish farming project to generate income for AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children. “Our service there remains the single most rewarding educational experience of my life,” says JohnBull. “I still think about it almost daily, and the lessons I learned there in terms of really caring for people are still a part of me.”

JohnBull realized that he still had a calling to directly diagnose and treat patients, and spent a year at the University of Virginia Center for Global Health researching malnutrition and intestinal parasites. Now a Johns Hopkins medical student, JohnBull is at the Bloomberg School to focus on biostatistics and epidemiology. “I look forward to the opportunity to realize this dream—a dream of service through research for practical solutions that effectively guide diagnosis and treatment of people who entrust their health to us.”