Gifts at Work
Postcards from Honduras
For about two dozen first-year medical students, HOMBRE is an annual rite of passage — a summer medical mission trip that takes them to Honduras and the Dominican Republic, two of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Each year since 2000, a new crop of first-year students takes charge of HOMBRE, inheriting the tradition from the previous class along with recommendations on how to pull it off. They spend the school year before their trip raising funds to support travel and the purchase of medication and supplies for their patients. Then, for 10 days, the students work alongside physicians, nurses and pharmacists at clinics, as well as visiting patients in their homes, providing care in schools and initiating public health projects, such as clean water filter programs.
Last summer, two of the students used HOMBRE to undertake research in three Honduran communities. With guidance from their faculty advisors, Internal Medicine’s Gonzalo M. Bearman, M.D., M.P.H., and Mike Stevens, M.D., M.P.H., they made discoveries that could be useful to future trips.
Catherine Pearson evaluated Hondurans’ access and barriers to healthcare. She notes that “even Honduran communities that are located near one another displayed considerable differences in their access to health services. By understanding the barriers unique to each community, medical relief efforts may be able to provide more targeted care.” Her research can guide future relief trips as her findings point to areas of greatest need and identify the considerable barrier that geography plays in access to care.
Gabriela Halder, M.P.H., surveyed access to and sanitation of drinking water. “In Honduras diarrheal diseases are currently among the top three leading causes of disease in children up to five years of age,” says Halder. “Since contaminated water can harbor the infectious agents that cause diarrhea, recent efforts have focused on increasing the availability of clean water throughout the country.”
Pearson and Halder recently returned from the 60th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Philadelphia, Pa., held Dec 4-8, 2011. They presented scientific posters of their research work in Honduras and say it was exciting to meet and learn from others in the field of international medicine as well as represent the medical school in the research world.
Learn more about HOMBRE at www.hombremedicine.org
