Month: August 2013

Patrick Elliot, MD, MPH, of BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, contributes this post about his work with Compañeros en Salud México.

A hot cup of coffee is an almost universal invitation to friendship and conversation, and it’s never truer than in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas.  On Mexico’s southern border, Compañeros en Salud México (CES), a sister project of Partners In Health, has been working in several rural, coffee-growing communities to strengthen the healthcare system alongside the state government of Chiapas.  In six rural pueblos in the mountains of Chiapas, the physicians of CES live and work alongside the people of the community.  The lived reality of the community is shared by both patients and our doctors and opens new paths to discoveries, conversations and quite a few hot cups of coffee.

I began work with CES in February 2012, shortly after it officially began operations.  At first, my work largely consisted of assisting in public sector community clinics that CES helps administer, seeing patients alongside the social service physicians who operate the clinics and are the heart of the organization.  The social service physicians (pasantes) are recently-graduated medical students who must complete a year of required service before gaining eligibility for independent practice or entrance into residency.  The pasantes and I would see patients together in the clinic, discuss cases and management options and in the evenings make house calls to patients who were too sick, infirm or who had simply failed to come to clinic during the day.  As night fell across the town, we’d sometimes sit on the clinic roof and watch the stars.  Continue reading “Hot Coffee” →

Patrick Elliot, MD, MPH, of BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, contributes this post about his work with Compañeros en Salud México.

A hot cup of coffee is an almost universal invitation to friendship and conversation, and it’s never truer than in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas.  On Mexico’s southern border, Compañeros en Salud México (CES), a sister project of Partners In Health, has been working in several rural, coffee-growing communities to strengthen the healthcare system alongside the state government of Chiapas.  In six rural pueblos in the mountains of Chiapas, the physicians of CES live and work alongside the people of the community.  The lived reality of the community is shared by both patients and our doctors and opens new paths to discoveries, conversations and quite a few hot cups of coffee.

I began work with CES in February 2012, shortly after it officially began operations.  At first, my work largely consisted of assisting in public sector community clinics that CES helps administer, seeing patients alongside the social service physicians who operate the clinics and are the heart of the organization.  The social service physicians (pasantes) are recently-graduated medical students who must complete a year of required service before gaining eligibility for independent practice or entrance into residency.  The pasantes and I would see patients together in the clinic, discuss cases and management options and in the evenings make house calls to patients who were too sick, infirm or who had simply failed to come to clinic during the day.  As night fell across the town, we’d sometimes sit on the clinic roof and watch the stars.  Continue reading “Hot Coffee” →

The older members of our group (Jamie, Whit and me) have taken several days to adjust to the time difference and the altitude. The teens of course look like they don’t have any idea what we are talking about when we complain of feeling tired, light headed and short of breath at times. We are at a similar altitude as Denver, it being ‘the mile high city’.  We are all well on this fifth day.

I’m feeling the comfort of coming back to Guatemala having visited in April 2012. Familiar faces, expected changes in the pace, climate, walking conditions (rough cobblestones everywhere), etc. Of course it didn’t keep me from feeling anxious all over again about the talks I had planned for the social workers and psychologists of Common Hope. The first talk was on Resiliency and Positive Psychology. The second talk was on Motivational Interviewing. My major challenge was wondering how it was going to be to have me speaking English while my slides had been translated in to Spanish and then to have an interpreter playing go between. Thankfully, I had gotten excellent advise from Joji Suzuki, MD, from the addiction psychiatry department after practicing at our Motivational Interviewing practice group. He had suggested I try to speak more like a Ted Talk and less like a lecturer. Good advice for a talk in any country!

Continue reading “Motivational Interviewing Overseas” →

Duncan Maru, MD, PhD, a resident in BWH’s Division of Global Health Equity, is a co-founder of the organization, Nyaya Health. Nyaya’s mission is to realize the right to health by delivering transparent, data-driven health care for Nepal’s rural poor.

In a recent blog post for Nyaya, Maru writes about a patient named Nirajan.

“Nirajan is a nine-year-old boy who had been seen by our clinicians two weeks prior and diagnosed via ultrasound with a massive pericardial effusion. The diagnosis was not hard to make, and the etiology was almost certainly to be tuberculosis. Over 12 hours away from an intensive care unit or a cardiologist, our clinicians at that time made the decision that most rural doctors would make; they prescribed Nirajan anti-tuberculosis therapy and steroids.”

Read Nirajan’s story and learn more about the work of Nyaya Health.

On Aug. 5, the Ministry of Health of Rwanda welcomed President Clinton and Chelsea Clinton to visit the Human Resources for Health (HRH) Program. The program, which was launched by His Excellency President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and President Clinton, is celebrating the completion of its first year and the beginning of its second year.

The program operates through an innovative model to address critical gaps in the quantity and quality of health professionals in Rwanda. Each year, HRH deploys nearly 100 faculty–doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and global health management experts –for one-year periods to “twin,” or partner, with Rwandan colleagues. Faculty mentor and support their Rwandan colleagues in the areas of curriculum development, didactic teaching, clinical teaching and management and administration.

In the first year of the program, 91 faculty from U.S. institutions, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, partnered with 90 Rwandan colleagues across four referral hospitals, seven district hospitals and eight schools of medicine, nursing and midwifery and public health. Continue reading “Clintons Visit HRH Program Faculty, Patients in Rwanda” →