{"id":9370,"date":"2018-02-07T10:58:06","date_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:58:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=9370"},"modified":"2018-02-07T10:58:06","modified_gmt":"2018-02-07T15:58:06","slug":"gabriela-ika-kovacikova-20-finding-your-way-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2018\/gabriela-ika-kovacikova-20-finding-your-way-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Gabriela “Ika” Kovacikova ’20: Finding Your Way Home"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Gabriela \"Ika\" Kovacikova '20<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As an avid swimmer, one thing second-year Geisel School of Medicine student Ika Kovacikova loves about being back in Hanover is swimming at the Dartmouth pool, where she first learned to swim, and the Upper Valley Aquatic Center, where she is now a member of the center\u2019s masters team.<\/p>\n

Initially afraid to put her head underwater, Kovacikova started swimming when her mother decided the only way for her daughter to overcome her fear was to join a swim team. But in her first year on the team, the enterprising 7-year-old realized swimming the backstroke would keep her head above water, so she swam that stroke in every meet.<\/p>\n

When she learned to put her head underwater\u2014it changed her life.<\/p>\n

Competitively swimming throughout high school and college, Kovacikova says, \u201cSwimming has defined who I am. It has taught me to never ever, ever give up on a challenge, a skill I have relied on often in medical school, and one that I know will serve me well when I start taking care of patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in Hanover as the child of scientists, she knew science would also play a significant role in her life, but it wasn\u2019t until she went to college that public health captured her attention. At Wellesley College she created her own major\u2014Health and Society \u2014and spent four years examining the underpinnings of health disparity and how the social determinants of health impact outcomes. Following her junior year, she spent the summer at Chicago\u2019s Rush University Medical Center as a health disparities research fellow working with David Ansell, MD, who was writing a book about health disparities in urban centers, The Death Gap<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI shadowed him every Friday and saw how he was able to integrate medicine, science, and public health beyond diagnosis and treatment\u2014he actively worked with community members helping them to organize and mobilize around a variety of problematic issues,\u201d Kovacikova recalls. \u201cI saw first-hand how medicine and public health complement each other\u2014that\u2019s when I decided to pursue medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that wasn\u2019t all Kovacikova decided to pursue. She also decided to swim the English Channel\u2014a 22-mile open water swim between Dover, England and Calais, France.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Geisel med student Ika Kovacikova swimming across the English Channel. She completed the crossing in 11 hours, 28 minutes-nearly two hours under the average swim time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She began a rigorous training schedule swimming twice a day, everyday. Her tenacity caught the attention of another swimmer who asked her why she was at the pool so often. She told him she was training for an English Channel swim then countered, asking him why he was there so often. He said he\u2019d already swum the English Channel and was training for a Catalina Channel swim.<\/p>\n

The meeting was fortuitous.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a member of the Chicago Police Marine Department and was able to get us permission to swim in Lake Michigan, just past the Chicago skyline, so we trained together daily,\u201d Kovacikova says. \u201cIn a city of 2.7 million people, it was a miracle that we met.\u201d<\/p>\n

At summer\u2019s end she completed the English Channel swim in 11 hours, 28 minutes\u2014nearly two hours under the average swim time.<\/p>\n

And in summer 2017, after completing her first year of medical school, she was invited to participate in a 42-mile open water relay swim\u2014a double-crossing from Los Angeles to Catalina Island. The team\u2014five women all from Seven Sisters colleges<\/a>\u2014was the first all-female team to attempt the swim and they set the women\u2019s record for a one-way crossing. Along the way, Kovacikova was accompanied by a school of dolphins, a mola-mola<\/a>, and several jellyfish. \u201cIt was neat to approach this challenge as part of a team\u2014without my teammates I would not have been able to swim at midnight in the Pacific Ocean. It\u2019s really special to hold that record and share its success with other Seven Sisters swimmers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Seven Sisters Catalina Channel relay team, from left to right: Rebecca Nevitt (Wellesley), Ika Kovacikova \u201920 (Wellesley \u201814), Charlotte Samuels (Smith), Abby Bergman (Smith), Eliza Cummings (Smith), Cathleen Pruden (Mount Holyoke).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kovacikova, who enjoys the camaraderie of teamwork, recognized the parallel between medicine and team sports while preparing for medical school\u2014she spent two years at Boston Children\u2019s Hospital as a research assistant in a multidisciplinary team embedded in the hospital\u2019s primary care clinic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team makes the biggest difference,\u201d she says, \u201cIt\u2019s a necessary ingredient in addressing the social determinants of health.\u201d And Geisel\u2019s culture of interdisciplinary collaboration along with its focus on collegiality is what drew her to back to her hometown.<\/p>\n

When she\u2019s not swimming or studying, Kovacikova can be found introducing her classmates to the beauty of the region\u2014she especially enjoys taking friends biking and on hiking trips in the White Mountains. Hiking is a wonderful way to get to know people because everyone has the same goal\u2014reaching the top of the mountain, \u201cand there\u2019s nobody to talk to on a mountainside except each other,\u201d she laughingly says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving the opportunity to return here as an adult and being able to give back to the community has been special and fulfilling,\u201d Kovacikova says. \u201cThe Upper Valley will always be near and dear to my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
At the summit of Mt. Adams in the White Mountains, top row: Griffin Reed '20, Caroline Dodge '20, Kovacikova, Deirdre Caffrey '20; bottom row: Maddy Whitaker, Missy Cantave '20, George Wang '20, Mariah Servos '20 with her dog Nash.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Competitive swimming taught Ika Kovacikova \u201920 about the importance of teamwork and shared success. It also taught her to never give up on a challenge\u2014a skill she brings to medical school and believes will serve her well when taking care of patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9373,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[517,409,257],"class_list":["post-9370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-education","tag-medical-student","tag-student-spotlight","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/02\/Kovacikova.3-v2.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-2r8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9370"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9381,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9370\/revisions\/9381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}