After graduating this May, senior Tayla Moore will move to India for one year with the support of an esteemed Fulbright award. Moore first traveled to India her junior year at Tulane through the School for International Training’s Public Health, Gender, and Community Action program. Stationed between New Delhi and Palampur, Moore conducted research on the management and promotion of health and wellbeing through naturopathy—a traditional Indian medical system that aims to treat health issues in a holistic way, aiming at the root of the issue, rather than symptoms. She looked specifically at how individuals with lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, as well as individuals with arthritis, had turned to traditional Indian treatments when biomedical treatments didn’t help their condition.
This work formed the basis of her Fulbright proposal, and when she returns to India this year, Moore will work again with Kayakalp, a holistic treatment center in Palampur. Her current research has grown to focus on crosspathy, which utilizes both biomedical and traditional systems to work together as an all-encompassing treatment. Moore will work in Delhi, Kerala, and Palampur to interview practitioners from each field about their opinions of the other discipline, and how these opinions may or may not form a barrier to care, specifically in regard to diabetic patients. Through her initial visit and research, Moore found that India has an extreme healthcare burden—there are not enough doctors for people and traditional healing centers can be difficult to access in remote areas. “People need more treatment, and they need to be able to see doctors,” explained Moore. “I think medical and natural healthcare practitioners need to work together equally, and I think if you’re able to integrate aryuvedic systems such as herbs, acupuncture, yoga, and meditation, into hospitals where healthcare is more accessible, then that would be ideal.”
Moore, an English and public health double major from Chicago, shares that she came to Tulane to study public health; but, having written since fourth grade and participated in slam poetry in high school, Moore explained, “I wanted to continue cultivating what I loved to do, which was write. And I think everyone should have a liberal arts education. The liberal arts teach you the humanistic side to every subject, and by having these two majors I felt the whole of me was educated. Both have been really important to the development of who I am.”