Balch headshot

Leland Fellow

Kaila Balch

12th Class, 2023-2025

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Kaila Balch is a Park City, Utah, native and recent graduate of Duke University with a Master’s of Science (MSc) in Global Health. Her graduate work focused on the the impact of gold mining, mercury, and infectious disease in the Amazon, taking her to Peru, Ecuador and Guyana for fieldwork. Prior to her MSc, Kaila graduated from the University of Utah with a dual B.A. in Environmental Studies and B.S. in International Studies, focusing on Food Systems and Global Health, respectively. Her undergraduate work sparked her interest in areas of environmental justice, conservation, food security and sustainable agriculture. Throughout her academic career, she worked on her campus farms and food pantries; served in AmeriCorps; developed food security materials with the International Rescue Committee; and focused on women’s health and gender-based violence with the Administration for Children and Families (D.C.) and National Coordinating Coalition (Guyana). Outside of professional work, Kaila is an avid climber, skier, and travel enthusiast. As a part of the 12th Leland Fellowship class she looks forward to further engaging in food security and justice work.

Host Organization: CARE

First Year Placement
Fort Portal, Uganda

Kaila helped to advance the scale-up of CARE’s Farmer Field and Business Schools (FFBS), a proven model which enhances nutrition, livelihoods, women’s roles among small-scale farmers by boosting production, resilience, climate adaptation, and diet diversification.

She supported integration of FFBS into academic and training centers, influencing curricula design, advancing farmer certification, helping vulnerable populations, developing the Research and Learning agenda, while advocating for funding and government adoption.

Kaila supported documentation of the impact of CARE’s Fill the Nutrition Gap project in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement in Uganda. This project seeks to improve access and consumption of nutritious foods to reduce malnutrition and anemia.

Refugee women farmers and their families learned how to make briquettes, cultivate kitchen gardens, run village savings groups, and rear small livestock. Successes included reduced child malnutrition and malaria, and use of savings to buy more livestock. Harvest loss and livestock deaths, are under investigation.

Publications & Blog Posts