I will travel with an interdisciplinary team of healthcare providers from the US as well as high school students from the Greater Atlanta Christian School to a rural area of Belize. We will work with local Belizean healthcare workers and community members to provide healthcare to the local population.
The purpose of this project is twofold: to partner with local healthcare providers to improve access to healthcare in the rural town of St. Margrets Village, Belize, and to mentor high school students from the US who are interested in learning about different careers in healthcare. This location is one of the established relationships that Global Health Impact has created across the world. GHI focuses on clinical experiences in rural settings, which are often medically underserved. The organization hopes to increase the frequency with which it returns, in order to provide more sustainability. By partnering with a local healthcare provider in the area, GHI can better understand and care for the needs of the local people.
I hope to improve the health and health education of the people around St. Margrets Village, Belize. I also hope to educate and inspire the high school students who will be traveling with us, so that they see how healthcare providers can contribute to global health.
I traveled with an organization called Global Health ImPAct, which aims to provide meaningful global health clinical experiences for health practitioners in training. This particular trip to the Belizean jungle was also accompanied by a group of high school students from Atlanta, Georgia, who were interested in learning more about a career in the health sciences. We worked in barebones clinics that operate whenever volunteer providers come through town and we did home visits as directed by the local community health workers. This trip could not have come at a better time in my life. I have been practicing community emergency medicine in the U.S. for 7 years since graduating residency and reached the point of burnout. I went to work every day no longer feeling compassion or fulfillment in my career. I felt a renewed passion for medicine working in Belize, where I did not feel the pressure of time constraints or electronic medical records, and had to rely solely on my history and clinical exam to diagnose a patient. The people were so kind and patient. They shared stories of difficulty accessing care and diagnostic testing at their hospitals. This gave me a renewed perspective of my ability to help my patients in the U.S. This experience made me grateful for the ability to provide access to care, pain relief, and answers to my patients in the emergency department in the U.S. I am inspired to continue working with global health organizations that promote sustainable and culturally sensitive health interventions.
