Global Health: Visits and Practicums!

Hola todos! Mary and Kelly here reporting out of Oaxaca, Mexico. We now have started our second half of the semester, and the two of us are in the Global Health track. We kicked off Global Health with 4 classes with Burt Wilcke and Jonathan Treat who taught us about four major topics of global health: climate change, vector-borne diseases, built environment, and migrant health. After in depth discussions of assigned readings in the morning, we got to go to some really cool site visits with Seguro Popular, Secretary of Health, Casa de la Ciudad, and Caminos in the afternoon. All of these site visits were each informative and really interesting.

This past week has been absolutely incredible for us. The Global Health track started our internships, and so far they have been such an experience. Kelly is working sola at Fundación Oaxaqueña de Equinoterapia in San Sebastián Tutla (The Oaxacan Equine Therapy Foundation). 

The first week of the internship at Fundación Oaxaqueña de Equinoterapia has worked out really well. There are other volunteers that work at the foundation, some are even from Mexico City and are students at a university there. This foundation focuses on children with all kinds of disabilities: mental, physical, and emotional. So far some of the patients include those with downs syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness, autism, and even a boy who is mute by choice. The organization works with each patient individually and caters to what each of their needs are, making this an incredible real life experience and educational opportunity. It is amazing seeing all the smiles of these kids when they are riding the horses; you can really see their confidence build right up.

Here is Sicaro, he is the main therapy horse. The majority of the patients struggle with remembering the volunteers' names, but they always remember Sicaro's name. 

Some of us are working at the local clinic in Arrazola (see week 4 blog). Our first day we sat down with some of the workers and brainstormed ideas of what we can do. We decided to work with the local schools to teach them about certain health concepts. We didn’t want to go in and teach them stuff they already had been taught, or weren’t interested in, so we set about to create a questionnaire to figure out what they wanted to learn. We gave questionnaires to about ten people per classroom in about ten different classrooms, and we also gave them to the teachers. While many circled questions about “violencia en noviazgos” - “violence in relationships” or healthy foods, or adolescent rights, many wrote in bullying, as we had not included it on our list. We decided to focus on these three, starting with their rights and then going into specific about their rights against violence and their rights to a healthy life. The rest of the week, we’ve been researching and working on coming up with an appropriate presentation to keep the kids entertained and be informative.

Still other practicums include working with a woman who practices traditional medicine and have been making soap and practicing their limpias (traditional cleansings) as well as working in an afterschool program to help kids with their homework.

Pizza and Salad at our end of the week discussion.

We concluded the week on Friday with a wonderful dinner of pizza and salad. We talked about our weeks at our practicums and related it back to the major themes we’ve been studying (one health, migrant health, built environment, climate change, vectoreborne diseases, etc.) We wrapped up our conversation with a big thank you and goodbye to Burt, as he left the following day, and  prepared ourselves for the relaxing weekend ahead.

Hasta luego!

-Kelly and Mary