From mosquitos to medical school, WCU alumnus shares his story
Joe Davis has two degrees from WCU — degrees he’s put to good use studying diseases spread by mosquitos. Donated photo
Joe Davis, a double alumnus of Western Carolina University with a bachelor’s in emergency medical care and a master’s in biology, has had a unique higher education journey.
From being unsure of his future, to starting school at WCU to become a paramedic, to getting involved with vector-borne disease research to now being accepted into medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Davis has quite the list of experiences that has prepared him for a career in medicine.
“During my younger years, I struggled with focusing on what I wanted to do. I dropped out of high school and struggled in community college,” Davis said. “Then, I had a good friend of mine pass away at the young age of 22 from cystic fibrosis, and that was my wakeup call to do something with my life. I took some basic emergency medical technician courses at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, and I got really interested and it gave me the push to get my academics back on track.”
Once Davis completed his courses at A-B Tech, it was time to decide his next step.
“I came to Western because I was interested in becoming a paramedic and in the back of my mind, I had the desire to go to med school, too,” Davis said. “There were two tracks to choose from in the program, and I chose the pre-med one. I ended up taking a genetics class with Dr. (Indrani) Bose, who stressed to us that if we wanted to pursue med school, we needed to get involved in research.”
During that time, Davis made a phone call to UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine to see what he needed to do to prepare for med school.
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“I remember a sweet lady by the name of Ms. Reed answering my frantic phone call, and I told her my situation, that my grades weren’t great and that I was working on turning things around,” he said. “She told me that I was not the first person to be in this situation and would not be the last. She said to focus on making A’s.”
In preparation for med school and to work on his GPA, Davis asked around about research opportunities at WCU when he was directed to Brian Byrd, WCU’s mosquito expert and professor in the environmental health sciences program.
“In 2015, I found out that Dr. Byrd was going to be giving a talk on vector-borne diseases in downtown Sylva, so I thought that would be a great way to get a better understanding of the type of research I could do with him,” Davis said. “This is where I learned about Zika and La Crosse encephalitis, which is very prevalent in Western North Carolina. I was fascinated listening to Dr. Byrd talk about the field work he does.”
Learning about La Crosse and how it predominantly affects children in WNC sparked Davis’ interest in conducting research on vector-borne illnesses.
“After the talk, I got in line to ask questions and shared with Dr. Byrd my interest in working with him in his epidemiology lab,” Davis said. “He agreed to let me come to the lab but required a minimum one-year commitment and so I started off by attending lab meetings.”
Davis said attending the lab meetings for graduate and undergraduate students helped him immerse himself in the laboratory language.
“Sitting in on those meetings was super fascinating to me because I was learning the language and also about the different mosquito species,” he said. “I vigilantly attended the meetings, and Dr. Byrd asked if I would like to help one of the graduate students with a larvicide research project. My part in the project was to go check the containers that were put out to collect larvae daily.”
Once Davis completed his part of that project, he continued to help students with other research projects that pertained to vector-borne illnesses.
“The more projects I worked on, the more responsibility I was given,” Davis said. “Dr. Byrd realized what a naturally curious person I am. He described me as ‘innately curious.’ At the end of my junior year, he told me about a research opportunity in Florida where I would spend the summer interning at a mosquito research facility, so of course I jumped on the opportunity.”
Davis interned at the Anastasia Mosquito Control District of St. Johns County in St. Augustine, Florida, where he conducted research for the facility, which focuses on prevention and control of mosquitoes.
“A type of mosquito that is invasive in Florida is called the Aedes aegypti, and it can spread Zika virus and dengue fever,” Davis said. “The facility is working to prevent invasions and finding new ways to detect diseases moving into a population and work to mitigate the risk to residents. There was a lot of money allocated to mitigating Zika, so the facility worked on an Aedes aegypti eradication project in downtown St. Augustine that I helped with too during that summer.”
During his internship, Davis was able to work in the field, lab and with public education and outreach.
“I came back to WCU my senior year and continued my paramedic studies but I was wearing two hats because as I was finishing up my degree. I was going to the lab at night working on projects for Dr. Byrd,” Davis said.
Davis finished the paramedic program and went to work for Wake County in 2018. He completed his bachelor’s degree in emergency medical care from WCU in 2019.
“My now-wife and I ended up moving back to the Asheville area, and I decided to go ahead and shoot for med school,” Davis said. “I learned through being a paramedic that I really enjoy patient care and human interaction, as well as the clinical side of things. I also learned how to get involved with research and incorporating those skills into my decision-making as a paramedic.”
Davis identified his research interests, which include clinical care and public outreach.
“It was four years after the initial phone call to UNC-Chapel Hill, and I had a Zoom call with Ms. Reed. She remembered me and I got to share with her that I graduated with honors,” Davis said. “She had tears in her eyes; she was so thrilled to hear that. She told me the next step was to get my master’s so they could look at that GPA in place of my undergraduate GPA where I had struggled in the decade before coming to WCU.”
Davis reached out to Byrd to see what options he had for a master’s program.
“When I reached back out to Dr. Byrd, he shared that he had just received a grant that I could use to work on a graduate thesis about La Crosse encephalitis,” Davis said. “Once again, I jumped at the opportunity to help shape my career, gives me more research experience and a tangible product that will help people.”
While earning his master’s, Davis was working full-time as a paramedic and serving as a graduate assistant.
“While not sustainable long-term, I pushed myself as much as I could because I knew getting accepted into medical school was going to be no easy feat,” he said. “I also got married during this time period, so there was a lot on my plate.”
It was also around this time that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, and Davis and his wife were both on the frontlines dealing with critically ill patients.
“My wife was a nurse on a pulmonary unit exclusively working with COVID patients, and I was working with those patients from an EMT perspective,” Davis said. “I got an interesting point of view because I was experiencing the pandemic firsthand while also taking graduate courses where a lot of our curriculum was adjusted due to the pandemic. I felt very prepared and equipped to understand public health issues from the inside out because of my situation.”
Davis was also working on his La Crosse encephalitis graduate thesis during the pandemic.
“La Crosse is endemic in Western North Carolina because of the mountains, which is home to the most prominent carrier of the disease, the Aedes triseriatus, or more commonly known as the Eastern Treehole mosquito,” Davis said. “When you are dealing with a very rural population, there are limitations in terms of access to health care and early detection as well as public health limitations. It is not like Florida where I could do surveillance on 200 houses in 20 minutes.”
Davis was used to dealing with these limitations as a paramedic but learned even more from the academic research side of rural health care, especially in terms of vector-borne illnesses.
“We are starting to call La Crosse ‘La Crosse neuroinvasive disease’ because encephalitis is only one symptom of this vector-borne illness,” he said. “Most people do not end up with encephalitis and are typically asymptomatic. As far as we can tell, one out of 100 to one out of 300 will develop clinically recognizable symptoms. A very small portion of those patients, predominantly children, will go on to have encephalitis, meningitis, seizures or extreme vomiting and end up in the emergency room.”
As part of the thesis, Davis followed up on some past cases that Byrd had worked on where there were clusters of the illness at the same or nearby location.
“The question is ‘Why is that happening?’ and if it was truly random, you should not see more than one person at the same house have La Crosse, and if two children were, but their chances of developing symptoms should be slim to none,” Davis said. “But these children from the same household have become symptomatic so we survey the house and surrounding areas to take inventory of the various potential risk factors. We look to see what trends emerge as well if there are new invasive species when comparing against a group of houses that have no history of anyone at the house having the illness.”
The major takeaway from Davis’ research was that homes where a child had La Crosse in the past had significantly more mosquitoes.
“This led us to look at percentages of dense foliage around the house, the water and the types of containers around the house,” Davis said. “The other component of this research project was an epidemiologic survey, which was an epidemic-like summary of La Crosse cases in North Carolina during 2021. We reviewed cases and as we predicted, we found certain counties in the state pose much more risk than others. The number of cases relative to the populations showed a much more significant risk.”
One of the most unexpected findings was the statistically significant clinical differences between adults and children.
“We found that children were more likely than adults to have seizures and encephalitis, so this means as far as we can tell the disease affects a child’s body differently than an adult’s,” Davis said. “Otherwise, it might be assumed children are more likely to get the illness because they are typically outside more than adults, or many other factors could be considered. But when we look at the severe symptoms, it is typically children who experience them.”
Davis presented his research findings at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Conference in Seattle.
“That was such an awesome and influential experience because I got to stand shoulder to shoulder with public health officials and researchers from all over the world that are working on things like drug-resistant malaria,” Davis said. “Dr. Byrd had helped me get to this point and I was also given funding by the biology department. WCU truly gives undergraduate and graduate students hands-on opportunities that you would be hard pressed to find anywhere else.”
After he finished up his research project and graduated with his master’s in biology in 2023, Davis knew it was time to realize his dream of med school.
“I finished up my graduate work and took the MCAT as a non-traditional student, which required me to go back and study things I had learned about more than a decade ago,” he said. “I applied to 27 med schools, UNC-Chapel Hill was of course my number one choice, and I ended up being accepted.
Davis started his dream of becoming a doctor earlier this month when he began classes in Chapel Hill, a dream he says would not be possible without all the support he received from Byrd during his time at WCU.
“I would not be where I am today without Dr. Byrd. He has been one of the most influential people in my life and he has helped me to develop my thinking, my research and myself as a person,” Davis said. “He saw potential in me early on and pushed me and expected the best out of me.”
