2009 Fieldwork Projects
India
Student Team: Kallista Bley, Kimmi Hoang, Mara Horwitz, Sarah Nunn
Collaborating Institution: Swami Vivekananda
Youth Movement, Dr. Sridevi Seetharam, Dr. Chris Stewart
The students worked with the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), a grassroots organization that promotes public health and community-based healthcare in the surrounding 110 villages. There is dedicated attention to sustainability, community participation, and serving the needs of the rural poor.
Projects
- Documentation of Ayurveda procedures and preparations, which will contribute to a one-year nursing program
- Creating a standardized protocol for sickle-cell screening, hospital treatment, and community outreach
- Development of training materials for community health workers who will conduct a gestational diabetes population risk assessment
The students also had the opportunity to attend weekly mobile health clinic visits that serve remote communities in forests near the Kerala border.
Kenya
Student Team: Michelle Chu, Diana Nemirovsky, Teja Patil
Collaborating Institution: Family AIDS
Care and Education Services (FACES), Dr. Walter Adero, Dr. Craig Cohen
Project Background
The fisher-folk in Suba, which includes Mfangano Island, are a particularly vulnerable group of clients within FACES. The nature of their work makes it difficult to keep up with Antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and clinic appointments and causes them to suffer from HIV complications. This is in part because they are migrant and their schedules are highly volatile, making them subject to weather conditions and migration of fish within Lake Victoria. Secondly, there are jaboya, a subset of fishermen that solicit transactional sex from women in exchange for their high-value catch which increases the incidence of HIV.
Project
- Establish a hotline for fisher-folk in the Suba region
The goal of the fisher-folk hotline is to facilitate fisher-folk’s ability to pick up their medications in a timely fashion and keep their clinic appointments even when work takes them far from their usual clinic. Through the hotline clients will be able to find clinics close to where they are working, reschedule appointments, and arrange medication pick-ups at nearby clinics.
Tanzania
Student Team: Joy Bhosai, Molly Fyfe, Yue Liang, Evan Masunaga, Lin Zhao
Collaborating Institution: Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dr. Ephata Kaaya, Sarah Macfarlane
Project background
The team worked alongside students from similar programs at MUHAS to support the curricular review process. Teamed with their MUHAS peers, the Framework students participated in the school’s tracer study by administering surveys to MUHAS alumni and their employers at a number of healthcare sites throughout 15 regions in Tanzania. Done primarily to understand the extent to which the training MUHAS graduates received has prepared them to meet the health needs of Tanzania’s population, the tracer study will inform the institution-wide curriculum revision to take place over the next year.
Aside from learning how a tracer study is conceived, carried out and assessing the advantages and challenges that such a study provides, students will develop a greater understanding of Tanzania as a whole, the healthcare system and the health sciences education system there in particular.
Project
- Tracer Study: Survey administration, data processing and organization work