What is it about?
Students from the Midwest doing a travel abroad experience conducted door to door surveys in an impoverished community in Peru to identify health needs of the residents and to gather information about access to water and toilet facilities.
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Why is it important?
This was important for the local community health providers to know the types of illnesses that were most common in that community (respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses were very common). Dental health was a need identified by many residents and is frequently unavailable in this community. It was also helpful for the local health providers to have data about access to water and toilet facilities. It was also important for the students to have an opportunity to experience the living conditions in this community while providing an important service to the community.
Perspectives
Not all of the students in this travel abroad program were able to see and experience the living conditions of the residents in this community. The residents in this community experience significant poverty and live with no electricity, no running water, dirt floors, insects, rodents and very poor quality housing materials. The local health team needed to have some data about the health issues that were present in the community. This was a good opportunity to provide a needed service and have all the students see the community in a way they were not able to do before. It was a valuable experience for the students who mentioned this in their post-experience reflections. It was also important for the community-they decided to do a larger survey in the months after we were there, based on what we found. Using a community survey was an experience few students had ever had and they like being able to participate in some data collection. As a faculty member, it allowed me the opportunity to provide the students with a deeper, richer, more involved experience than was possible prior to this activity
Lori Steffen
People Incorporated Mental Health Services
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Identifying Health Needs in Peru Through Use of a Community Survey, Creative Nursing, January 2016, Springer Publishing Company,
DOI: 10.1891/1078-4535.22.4.289.
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