From ND to Fighting NTDs
Posted on November 12, 2013 in Guest Post, Young Alum Life, Young Alum's Stories![Haiti research[7]](http://blogs.nd.edu/young-alumni-blog/files/2013/11/Haiti-research7-300x199.jpg)
Emily interviews a patient with lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis) in Haiti about the psychological impact of NTDs
My sophomore year at Notre Dame, I acquired an awkward nickname that I have since embraced. I was at a dorm party enjoying a weekend off from classes and clubs when someone I didn’t know came up to me and said, “Hey – you’re that NTD girl, right?”
I blushed, both because a nickname including that abbreviation is awfully close to connoting a very different reputation, and because it was odd to think that I was now recognizable as “That Neglected Tropical Diseases girl” on campus. It was a moment of reckoning for me – accept this unusual new identity, or shy away from it? I stared at my new acquaintance through the dorm party strobe lights, took a deep breath, and said, “Yep, that’s me – that NTD girl.”
My friends, of course, found this incident hilarious, and promptly created a Twitter account for me under this name. I still use that Twitter handle today – as an employee of the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases’ END7 campaign. My journey from college sophomore organizing dirt cup sales to raise money for soil-transmitted helminth treatments to serving as END7’s grassroots outreach coordinator took many twists and turns, but it all started when I took Fr. Tom Streit’s Common Human Diseases class in the fall of 2009. Fr. Tom introduced NTDs to our class in a lecture one fall afternoon, and I can safely say four years later that no other lecture at Notre Dame has impacted my life more. The more I learned about NTDs – that they infect 1.4 billion of the world’s poorest people, that they perpetuate poverty by keeping children from school and adults from work, that they can be treated with safe and effective medications that are donated by pharmaceutical companies, that the overall cost of treating and protecting someone from the seven most common NTDs for a whole year is just 50¢ – the more I wanted to get involved. So, with Fr. Tom’s encouragement, I co-founded ND Fighting NTDs with five other freshmen.
![bagel giveaway[8]](http://blogs.nd.edu/young-alumni-blog/files/2013/11/bagel-giveaway8-300x202.jpg)
Emily and fellow ND Fighting NTDs officers Steph McKay and Mick McCurrie at the annual NTD Awareness Week Bagel & Brochure Giveaway
And to the sophomore boy who christened me “That NTD Girl” at that momentous dorm party – thank you. I’ve never looked back.
(P.S. If you want to support the effort to eliminate NTDs – treatable and preventable diseases that infect 1.4 billion people worldwide – you can like END7 on Facebook, make a small donation, or start a fundraising campaign with your family and friends. Check out END7’s latest video to see the impact of our work in Kenya – and email me if you want to get your church or community group involved!)