About Me

Sage Sade Fanfan

Hello, again my name is Sage Sade Fanfan, but I prefer to go by Sade. I am one of the 2023 GHSA fellows that will be traveling to Mysore, India to examine physical or psychological health issues.It is a daunting task to describe oneself in a few paragraphs. I will get the basics out of the way: I am an undergraduate attending Florida International University on a pre-med track double majoring in Psychology and Natural and Applied Sciences. 

For the majority of my life, I confidently knew I wanted to be a doctor. However, I was unaware of which specialty I wanted to study. When asked to specify, my response was always “something with kids”. With “something with kids” being the foundation of my career pursuits I involved myself in medical environments and environments tailored to adolescent development. As I grew older and learned proper terminology, I started answering the “What kind of doctor do you want to be?” with “either an OB/GYN or a Pediatric surgeon”. 

Recently while working at a non-profit after-school program called Branches that serves low-income families. I had the privilege of serving students ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade. I encountered and developed a relationship with a variety of students who did not always have the ideal living environment. The services we provided them: tutoring, homework assistance, enrichment activities, financial literacy physical education, art, music, drama, and essentially love have been crucial to their development and have made them better and happier people. My passion for children grew exponentially from this experience. As a mentor, students would confide their struggles and how it affected them emotionally to me, and in my limited capacity I was able to positively impact their lives. 

I now recognize that the “something for kids” that I want to do is provide and advocate for each child to receive the best psychosocial and physical care regardless of their socioeconomic status. My goal now is to become a child’s psychiatrist and to create my own outreach programs/practices so I can give back to the community by pouring into our future adults. My journey to accomplish this hefty goal starts now as I travel to India and will come across children with even fewer economic opportunities than children here in Miami. When I found out about the FIU India Global Health Program, I felt that it was a perfect fit for my career interests, as we would be conducting research in rural areas with families of limited resources. I plan to look deeper into how having limited health and educational resources affects a child's behavior. Some factors that I plan to gain more knowledge on is how malnourishment, dehydration, lack of education, and how diseases such as HIV negatively impact a child’s development and behavior.