Martel Senior Publishes Research on Injuries from Lawn Mowers

When Vanessa Costilla ’06 was 6 years old, she jumped into the bed of her father’s pickup truck, only to slip and fall onto the concrete driveway. “The next day, I couldn’t eat, and the room was spinning, so my mom started to worry,” she says. A trip to the hospital made the problem clear. “I had a blood clot in my brain,” Costilla recalls, “and I had to have surgery.”

Vanessa Costilla

That hospital stay would change Costilla’s life forever. “I just remember that something was always happening in the hospital,” she says. “I loved the hustle and bustle, and I was amazed that the doctor actually could make me better.”

Costilla’s fascination with hospitals and medicine was reaffirmed in high school, when she volunteered at a local hospital. After coming to Rice University, where she majored in economics and managerial studies, Costilla decided to take the science classes required for medical school. “I think knowledge in the areas of my majors will carry over into the hospital when I get out of medical school,” she says.

That seems likely if the research Costilla conducted as an undergraduate is any indication. She spent a summer as an intern at Johns Hopkins University, working with David Bishai from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health, and received national attention for a study of lawn mower-related injuries. Bishai suggested the subject after seeing such injuries firsthand as a doctor in the emergency room. “I’m interested in rural healthcare,” Costilla says, “so this topic tied in perfectly.”

Using survey data, Costilla and Bishai found that nearly 80,000 Americans a year visit hospitals for mower-related injuries. The study was published in the April edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine, and Costilla is the first author on the paper. Working closely with Bishai, Costilla conducted the research during summer 2005, but she continued to work on the research paper throughout her senior year at Rice. “We performed some additional analysis during the fall semester, and I did most of the revising for publication during winter break,” she says. “Needless to say, this paper kept me busy well past the summer I spent at Johns Hopkins.”

Research will be part of her career after medical school, Costilla says. She even has taken on a new interest in healthcare policy. “There are lots of important issues in healthcare that need to be dealt with,” she says. “I definitely want to have a practice in West Texas because I feel the population there needs it, but I want to make larger contributions too.”

Costilla is excited to be attending Texas Tech University’s School of Medicine. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

—Lindsey Fielder