ABOVE: La Paz, Bolivia, is the highest capital city in the world, providing researchers with a living laboratory to study human pregnancy at elevation.
COLLEEN GYDE JULIAN
To navigate the political, cultural, and language barriers that come with researching pregnancy in another country, Colleen Glyde Julian says she channels the properties of chewing gum. Julian, an integrative physiologist at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus, says that remaining flexible under grinding pressure is “the defining characteristic that somebody must have to do this kind of work”—wisdom she cultivated as a PhD student working under another Anschutz researcher, biomedical anthropologist Lorna Grindlay Moore. “You just have to take it all in stride.”
Working in Bolivia has meant, for example, balancing coolers of blood during hair-raising taxi rides through congested streets en route to the local hospital, crammed shoulder to shoulder with colleagues. And because luggage is often delayed in transit, ...
