#GDTBATH: 米歇尔Ballasiotes

Most people don’t know that children can have strokes.

But having experienced the impact pediatric strokes have on children’s lives firsthand, Carolina student 米歇尔Ballasiotes is shining a spotlight on the issue.

“I’ve chosen to make my stroke a positive thing in my life, rather than dwell on the negatives and what I struggle with,”巴拉西奥德说, who had a stroke while her mother was pregnant with her.

The senior health policy and management major spends her time conducting neurology re太阳城娱乐城 and advocating for changes to the U.S. 卫生保健系统.

Ballasiotes, 在夏洛特长大的人, noticed that many people didn’t know that children could have strokes, 更不用说在子宫里了. Using her personal story, she wanted to bring awareness to the danger. 那时她才8岁, she spoke to members of the American Heart Association about her life experiences as a stroke survivor.

She has also traveled to Washington to inform legislators about pediatric strokes, to lobby for re太阳城娱乐城 funding for the National Institutes of 健康 and address the 卫生保健系统.

She doesn’t want other families to face the same challenges as hers, like when her family was told she would have to see an expensive specialist instead of her local doctor. Her mom was able to fight for access to the local provider, but Ballasiotes knew many families didn’t have the resources to do so.

“I wanted to be able to educate others and say, ‘What is currently in place isn’t logical, 我们需要解决这个问题,’”巴拉西奥特斯说.

When it came time for Ballasiotes to consider colleges, she instantly knew Carolina was the place for her, given its top-ranked public health school.

“The 吉林斯全球公共卫生学院 is one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Carolina,”她说。.

而在这里, Ballasiotes has combined her personal experience with her studies to further raise awareness for pediatric stroke by creating “Pediatric Stroke Hero Bags” for patients at UNC Hospitals. 袋子里装满了资源, like toys to aid in the child’s recovery process and journals to help their parents relieve stress.

She even helped UNC Hospitals develop an emergency room protocol for patients who present with signs of pediatric stroke.

“We like to say that ‘time is brain’ when a child suffers a stroke,巴拉西奥特斯说. “It’s important for doctors to be able to recognize signs of stroke in children and treat them as rapidly as possible.”

刚刚过去的这个夏天, Ballasiotes extended her passion for public health by doing re太阳城娱乐城 with the UNC School of 医学’s neurosurgery department, where she analyzed workplace accommodations for epilepsy patients.

Ballasiotes hopes to attend occupational therapy school after graduating from Carolina. It’s a path that stems from her own positive experiences working with an occupational therapist, both as a patient and as a colleague for educational presentations.

“My OT had an ability to make my therapy sessions fun, so I didn’t even know I was actually working,巴拉西奥特斯说. “It made me look forward to every appointment, and I want to provide that same motivation to other kids.”