Hi everyone! I’m so excited to share my final project idea that I will work on and launch next semester. Tentatively called, Fragments of a Health Crisis: A Global Map of CKDu is a project idea that has been brewing in my mind for quite some time. For those who aren’t familiar, Chronic Kidney Disease of uncertain etiology (CKDu) is a global health epidemic that disproportionately affects rural agricultural communities, in places like Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Egypt, and India. Although Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is frequently caused by diabetes or hypertension, people who are diagnosed with CKDu have no history of either condition.
Even though CKDu has been a health concern for over 30 years, it doesn’t always get the critical attention it deserves. Media coverage helps highlight the issue, but those stories often feel scattered and disconnected. Meanwhile, researchers in fields like anthropology and the social sciences are doing significant work exploring the cultural and sociopolitical sides of this crisis—but their voices often get drowned out by the proliferation of purely medical or related scientific studies. That’s where my project comes in! This website will highlight stories about CKDu from newspapers around the world, alongside research from the social sciences and humanities. The goal is to create a globally connected platform where people can see how widespread and complex this issue really is. Using the technical skills that I have already learned and practiced, I will create a website which will also include an interactive web map with two
layers: One for newspaper articles and another for scholarly research, with features like filters based on the type of the resource, a time slider, and clusters of articles for easier browsing.
Personally, this is a project I would want to build as my doctoral research is based in the context of CKDu in Sri Lanka. I can also see how it will be useful for other researchers and academics studying CKDu, environmental health, or global epidemics, journalists looking to report on public health, agriculture, or environmental issues, and advocates and communities affected by CKDu who need a platform to amplify their stories and push for change. This project is also important to me because it combines storytelling, research, and technology in a way that can really make an impact. CKDu is more than a medical mystery—it’s a human rights issue, a social justice issue, and a story of resilience. By bringing together global narratives and highlighting the voices of communities and researchers, this map can preserve the cultural memory of this crisis while helping to inspire action.
While this project might look similar to my previous project in terms of its structure and technologies used (Leaflet.js for the interactive map and Map Tiler to render layers, HTML/CSS/JavaScript (probably with a free Bootstrap template) for the website, I am planning to challenge myself to learn more advanced tech features along the way. So, Stay tuned for updates.
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