Joseph Januszewicz ’21 has been named a 2021 Yenching Scholar, offering him acceptance into the one-year interdisciplinary China studies master’s program in Beijing at the Yenching Academy of Peking University beginning this fall.
The competitive English-language program combines humanities and social sciences “to incorporate the diverse backgrounds and experiences of program participants into the study of ancient, modern, and contemporary China, effectively acting as an incubator for innovative approaches to past, present, and future Chinese transformations,” according to the Yenching Academy website.
Januszewicz will join a cohort of 117 students from 37 countries who will pursue master’s degrees in Chinese studies. He plans to concentrate on health care delivery systems that use mobile applications. His goal is to integrate telehealth systems with other services such as pharmacies, insurance, and medical provider search engines, into one electronic tool.
“The U.S. is kind of behind on that,” he says, because there is no single system that can connect all these services. “In China they have one application for pretty much everything. It’s called WeChat. So I want to learn what they’ve been doing and try to improve our own health care system here.”
Januszwicz, an economics and Asian Society, Cultures, and Languages major with a minor in computer science, chose the economics and management track for his program at Yenching. “I think that health care finance is the way to change the system.”
Too often, health care startups in the U.S. are forced by investors to shows profitability immediately, leaving many innovations that could improve health services to languish, says Januszewicz, a member of the Allen House community.
Some of the earliest research into the quality of health care offered online through the mobile infrastructure was done by researchers at a hospital that is affiliated with Peking University, says Januszewicz.
“Beijing, being a major city, and the university having these connections, means I will be able to talk to many of the health care providers who are best able to tell what kind of positive impact these systems have had.”
Since the Yenching Scholars program’s inception in 2015, six Dartmouth students—José Burnes Garza ’17, Claire Groden ’14, William Sandlund ’18, Josh Tupler ’16, Georgina Wilson ’16, and Rae Winborn ’14—have received Yenching scholarships.
For more information about applying for the Yenching Scholarship and other international and national programs, visit Dartmouth’s Office of Fellowship Advising.
William Platt can be reached at william.c.platt@dartmouth.edu.
