I'm back...and off to Haiti!

After about two years of silence, my blog is back! I left Romania with such good writing intentions. Unfortunately reflecting, in writing, on my final classroom year of medical school seemed boring, for lack of a better word. I thought I would spare you all. My classes this year, the course work for my Masters of Public Health, were very interesting and conducive to writing, and thus my professors asked for many papers, leaving little writing energy for blogging. I’m sorry, Grandpa. But, on Sunday, I leave for Haiti to complete my Public Health Practicum and I would love for everyone to come with me.

The Public Health Practicum is the chance for Masters students to take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply it to a real public health situation. For my practicum, I will be evaluating an in-home water purification system called Gadyen Dlo, in Arcahaie, Haiti. I will be spending a little over a month in Haiti, and my time will be split between travelling to homes to perform water surveys and tests, contacting local schools to set up water educationals and researching other cost effective water purification systems, in use, in Haiti and other developing nations.

Haiti presents numerous public health challenges and numerous NGOs are there trying to address them. Unfortunately, lack of coordination between NGOs often exacerbates the problem. This is something I will be exploring through reading this summer and would love any thoughts people have in the comments below. The NGO I’m partnering with, Community Health Initiative (CHI), works exclusively in one area, Arcahaie. The founders realized that they could either do a little good over a large area of Haiti or could do a lot of good in one concentrated area. They choose the later, the approach I prefer in international aid. CHI has partnered with the community, since 2009, and empowers the community to identify the top priorities. Water quality was identified as a top priority recently, and in October 2012 the Gadyen Dlo program was implemented. 

I have much more to share about Haiti’s history and culture, about Gadyen Dlo and water quality and purification, about public health in theory and in practice, and about adventures in Haiti; but we have the next month for all of that. Right now, I will pause and go pack.