Royal Shrestha

Community-Academic Scholar: Royal Shrestha (he/his)

Project: Royal worked with Professor Melissa Goodnight and Professor Cherie Avent, and the Champaign Urbana Public Health District to address COVID-19 racial health disparities in Champaign and Urbana in African American faith-based communities and explore the impact COVID-19 has had on well-being and education. Learn more about the project.

Mentor reflection: Prof. Goodnight enjoyed working with Royal on this project because of his conscientiousness about the quality of his work and his willingness to ask questions and learn new things. "Royal was a team player, contributed thoughtful suggestions, and remained flexible as our project continued to grow. His contributions have been instrumental in moving our project forward with a focus on the integrity and quality of our community-based research," said Goodnight.

Scholar reflection: “As someone who is interested in pursuing a career in the field of healthcare and medicine, this program was a very unique opportunity for me to get started with my goals. From participating in interview with nurses and different vaccine clinic workers, I was able to get an insight of the most prevalent barriers to getting vaccinated and the things we can do right now to combat these issues.” 

Do you have personal story or path that led to your interest in this research project?
Last summer, I participated in a summer research program hosted by the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) as part of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. One of the aspects of this research program was looking at the spread of COVID-19 throughout different places in the globe. Data analysis showed how areas with a large majority of minorities had higher COVID-19 rates. 

When I came across this research project involving racial disparities and the impacts it has on vaccine clinics, it immediately grabbed my interest. I knew I could apply some of my background knowledge and my general volunteer experience with minorities to this project. As a minority myself, I knew just how huge the gap would be when it came to being vaccinated, as there are often times lack of transportation access, lack of information on the vaccines, and language barriers. I was motivated to apply to this project, as I wanted to find out just what types of factors played majors roles in this healthcare disparity crisis. I couldn’t be happier with how this project turned out, as it's given many new opportunities to explore COVID-19 and its impacts on the healthcare setting. 

How did participating in this program help you toward your goals?
As someone who is interested in pursuing a career in the field of healthcare and medicine, this program was a very unique opportunity for me to get started with my goals. There were many networking opportunities which I used to get a better understanding of the current health disparities when it comes to getting vaccinated. From participating in interviews with nurses and different vaccine clinic workers, I’ve been able to get an insight of the most prevalent barriers to getting vaccinated and the things we can do right now to combat these issues. 

As someone with STEM research background, I enjoyed doing research that was outside my background, especially one that involves healthcare and one that address a current major issue in society. I was able to offer my own ideas to this research project and given many opportunities to explore them with front and backline vaccine clinic workers. Overall, I am much more confident in my ability to conduct research and this experience will help me as I continue to do research here on campus.

What was the most meaningful part of this experience?
While this was a virtual summer experience, I very much enjoyed spending time with the other Community Academic Scholars during our weekly meetings and in our small groups. Getting to learn more about some of the backgrounds of the other scholars and their life stories was interesting to hear about. I was able to make new connections to some of the scholars and to my graduate student mentor who has been helping me across this summer.