VOICES OF THE
SON
The
Mississippi Adventure
After their May 2007 graduation, Katie Edelstein
and Patrice Pantin traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi to build houses as
part of Hurricane Katrina Relief.
"So we graduated, passed the boards, became
RNs, and decided to postpone joining the
workforce. We thought, 'We are nurses now;
let’s test our house building skills'...Biloxi
was said to be the hardest hit by Hurricane
Katrina and still needs a lot of repair.
Everywhere you go you can still see the
devastation two years later....The stadium is
located 4 miles from the ocean and during the
hurricane 25 feet of water descended on Biloxi
(imagine….a 25 foot wall of H2O)."
Hopkins Students Blog From
Haiti
Students from the Traditional Class of 2007
traveled to Haiti in late winter to conduct
community assessments and practice public health
nursing skills. A group of Accelerated
2007 students followed in May and provided a
glimpse into their international learning
experience through their
online blog. On their fifth day in
Haiti, the accelerated students divided into
three teams and battled Mother Nature to provide
care:
Day 5: Plan C
They say the hardest part about public
health nursing is getting to the patient. Case
in point: Today we just couldn’t get there. We
had planned to cross the Grand Anse, the river
that shares the name of this region, to conduct
our final adolescent health fair. Mother
Nature had other plans. The rain that fell
throughout the night caused the river to rise
too high for our snorkel truck to cross.
Clad in our classic white and blue uniforms, we
dispersed out across the muddy, rocky, pot-holed
“roads” of Jeremie.
Team 1: Out to
downtown Jeremie to the Aka-1000 mill to see how
protein enriched flour is made; the flour is
distributed by the Haitian Health Foundation to
combat malnutrition in women and children.
Team 2: Hopped in
the back of a van with Sister Sophie, a nurse
midwife from India, to provide prenatal care in
a mountain village. [We] screened mothers
using a high-tech portable sonogram and a tape
measure.
Team 3: Who says
there’s no “I” in team? Our lone ranger
braved the language barrier with an “English
translator” to a village heath post, where local
midwives convened for their monthly educational
session.
Summer
Research in Australia
This
summer, Natasha Kormanik '08
participated in the
Minority Global Health
Disparities Research (MHIRT) Program
program at the
University of Newcastle in New South Whales,
Australia.
"It was an
opportunity of a lifetime where I was able to
spend eleven weeks working in a neuroimmunologic
psychology lab performing behavior tests on
wistar rats. We were specifically looking at
neuroendocrine programming of the HPA axis and
the predisposition to later life anxiety and
post-traumatic stress disorder. It was a
research experience I will never forget!"
