SJP-News

2010-12-07T23:39:00.004-05:00

Welcome to

San Jose Partners

Above: Community members doing voluntary labor to prepare the ground for a clinic

We are a sustainable community development project out of the University of Rochester Department of Family Medicine and we are glad you have found us!

As you peruse our site, if you are as excited by our work as we are, please consider supporting us financially. In this gift-giving season, we encourage you to explore our alternative gift shop: Gifts of Health. Your purchase will make a difference in San Jose and you'll receive a card of recognition to give to the state-side "recipient."

Shop the Gifts of Health Alternative Gift Shop now...

http://www.sanjosepartners.org/whatyoucando/GiftsofHealth/

SJP Welcomes the Future

2010-08-20T10:55:00.010-04:00

San Jose Partners is pleased to welcome the Class of 2014 to the University of Rochester School of Medicine!

As you find your place at URSMD, we hope you will explore and become involved with San Jose Partners.

In a nutshell, we offer:

- Your avenue into applied global health at URSMD!

- Direct access to the longitudinal public health projects in San Jose, Honduras (water access, water filtration, latrines, cookstoves, microfinance, etc.)

- Direct access to our educational programs (scholarships, curriculum development)

- Web design/maintenance opportunities

- Fundraising opportunities

- The chance to be as much of a leader, a mover and a shaker as you would like

For a better understanding of what we (you!) do, please peruse our website.

- "Who We Are --> The Basics" for a general overview

- "What We Do --> Interventions --> pick one" for details on our various projects

- "What We Do --> Trip Reports" for a description of how our work transpires during a brigade

And of course, please contact us at sanjosepartners@gmail.com with any and all questions.

Welcome!

-Matt and the SJP Team

The Spring Brigade Returns

2010-06-22T13:47:00.004-04:00

The most recent trip to San Jose has recently returned, which means a few new items will be appearing on the site:

- The trip report summarizing all the activities of the brigade will soon appear under "What We Do --> Trip Reports"

- Brigade members are encouraged to share photos on the password-protected album site

As always, we welcome questions and inquiries about our work. Please don't hesitate to contact us at sanjosepartners@gmail.com

San Jose Partners goes to Yale

2010-04-24T14:44:00.003-04:00

Where: Unite for Sight Global Health and Innovation Conference at Yale University

What: Research poster presented: "Malek M, Stockman D. Effects Of Community Health Worker Follow-Up On Compliance With In-Home Ceramic Water Filters: A Randomized Controlled Trial In Rural Honduras."

Who: SJP member Matt Malek

When: April 17, 2010

Why: To share the knowledge gained through San Jose Partners' research

We look forward to continuing to combine top-quality research with grassroots, sustainable community development. Please explore our site to find out more about what we do...

'Tis the Season!

2009-12-10T22:33:00.005-05:00

Latrine with a view?

That’s what my mother wants for Christmas

This holiday season, please consider giving a gift from our alternative gift shop: Gifts of Health. Your gift will make a difference in San Jose and you'll receive a card of recognition to give to the state-side "recipient."

Shop the Gifts of Health Alternative Gift Shop now...

http://www.sanjosepartners.org/whatyoucando/GiftsofHealth/

Website Updates!

2009-11-11T17:07:00.006-05:00

The recent weeks have brought several upgrades to our website:

- Expanded explanations of our interventions.

http://sanjosepartners.org/whatwedo/interventions/

- A more complete description of our history and purpose.

http://sanjosepartners.org/whoweare/background/

- Streamlined ways to donate.

http://sanjosepartners.org/donate/

We hope you'll find the new material interesting and useful.

-The SJP Team

Thanks to The Highlands at Pittsford for hosting San Jose Partners

2009-09-17T00:41:00.002-04:00

To all those at The Highlands,

We wish to extend you our warmest thanks for kindly hosting us on your campus. We always enjoy the opportunity to share our stories and we hope that we were able to challenge and inspire. Together we can continue achieving worthy things.

Please take a minute to explore our website. You will find information on our projects, links to related publications, opportunities for creative giving, and archived stories and pictures from Matt's experience.

If you would like to contact Matt (the medical student who spoke with you) directly, please feel free to email him at mateo.malek@gmail.com.

Thanks again, and welcome to San Jose Partners!

-The SJP Team

Rochester Medicine Article: A Year in Honduras

2009-07-31T15:34:00.003-04:00

A medical student learns about healing while he works on the basic needs of water, nutrition and education for the people of San José

Since July 2008, third-year medical student Matthew Malek, 25, has spent his year-out in the rural village of San José, a community of approximately 300 households situated in the rugged western mountains of Honduras. Electricity services only 6 percent of the houses, and about 80 percent of the houses lack piped water. Nobody has a flush toilet; about half don’t even have a latrine. Getting to the nearest Internet connection requires a walk of from one to three hours. Matt has been living alone in the adobe community building in San José, working in the dual capacity of researcher and community health volunteer.

Full Article

May 2009 Trip Report Now Available

2009-06-20T23:53:00.002-04:00

Please check out the latest work going on in San Jose:

http://sanjosepartners.org/whatwedo/tripreports/

National Geographic Article - Community Health

2009-05-25T17:10:00.005-04:00

An interesting article on community health care workers in India.
Original article: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/community-doctors/rosenberg-text

Medical Migration patters image and text available here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/community-doctors/follow-up-text

Thank you for the article Dr. Campbell.

COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO DENTAL CARE Article Published!

2009-05-12T11:22:00.009-04:00

COLLABORATIVE APPROACH TO DENTAL CARE PROVISION

in Resource Poor Honduran Community
by
Frank J. Carberry, D.D.S.; Lindsay E. Phillips, M.D.

Download Latest Issue (article on page 22): here

Abstract
Access to dental care is becoming an increasing problem
in the United States, as in other parts of the world. The
dental program at the University of Rochester clinic in
Honduras, as well as other projects, have demonstrated
that the ability to deliver quality care can be enhanced by
expanded use of medical personnel, other than dentists,
and even by civic action. While there is no substitute for
the trained dentist, perhaps techniques learned in these
projects can alleviate some of the predicaments until such
a dentist is accessible.

Kirsten visits San Jose

2009-03-18T21:39:00.004-04:00

As many of you know, Matt Malek has been in San Jose for nearly 7 months now. For the past 10 days, his girlfriend, Kirsten Nagel, came to visit and volunteer!

An excerpt from Matt's blog about her trip:
Prior to coming to San Jose, Kirsten translated “The Penguin Song” into Spanish, with the hope of teaching it to kids at the various San Jose schools. “The Penguin Song” is a camp-type song about how to walk like a penguin, i.e. right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg, move the head, turn in circles. It’s VERY catchy, and when sung and danced by two gringos, VERY entertaining.

So, we set up a visit to the San Jose Centro school and the Portillon school, and showed up to each with a whole program of education and fun.

We would start by reading a children’s book, Kirsten in Spanish and I in English. We were pleasantly surprised to find that ALL the kids, from Kindergarten through 6th grade, were absolutely entranced by this. After, we donated the books to the schools for the kids to read themselves.

Read more about their adventures in San Jose here, The Legend Comes to Town: http://www.sanjosepartners.org/whatwedo/mattsblog/

Gifts of Health

2008-12-06T18:28:00.003-05:00

Announcing...

Gifts of Health: The San Jose Partners Alternative Gift Shop

Want to improve a life with a birthday present?
Looking for the perfect gift for someone who has everything?

Look no further!

Gifts of Health provides you with the avenue to give, in the name of the recipient, a health-sustaining, life-saving intervention. In San Jose, Honduras, the people suffer from easily preventable diseases due to a lack of clean water, clean air and adequate sanitation. By choosing to “give” one of our many simple interventions as a present, you give the gift of health to a family in San Jose. What better gift is there?

Click here to browse GIFTS OF HEALTH!

Promoting Community Health in Honduras

2008-10-14T23:41:00.004-04:00

Promoting Community Health in Honduras (link to .pdf)
by Douglas Stockman M.D. Director and Barbara Gawinski , Assistant Director Global and Refugee Health

The Department of Family Medicine at the University of Rochester continues to operate a year round Global Health Program which offers didactic training throughout the year and travels twice a year for two weeks at a time to rural Honduras. The Department has partnered with an NGO called Shoulder to Shoulder and a rural community called San Jose San Marcos de la Sierra in the Southwestern state of Intibucá, Honduras. The needs of the target community are great and go beyond curative medicine. By listening to the concerns of the local community members and performing qualitative community assessment, we are creating interventions designed to address the common problems. Below are highlights of our May 2008 trip.

The largest concerns of the village people continue to be water projects and latrines. The irst two ferro-cement water tanks we built are doing well. A third tank was started while we were there. This tank will provide water for the volunteer, Matthew Malek – a UR med student, who will start living in San Jose in July. Villagers from La Calera and Portillon, who were bene iting from piped water projects, were required to help with this tank’s construction. In addition to helping the project move forward faster, Portillon members learned about the speci ics of ferro-cement tank construction. The Portillon people will be building a ferro-cement tank as part of their piped water project.

During our November 2007 trip we helped La Calera begin a piped water project. They had completed the irst half of the project and had installed pipe from the water source to a distribution tank. During this trip we helped them purchase the additional 2+ miles of tubing needed to install a faucet at every household. When we arrived they had already hand-dug all the trenches required for the project. Within 12 hours of the pipes being delivered to San Jose Centro where the road ends, the pipe was being carried on villagers’ shoulders for the 2+ hour walk down the treacherous mountain-side to La Calera. Given each person was carrying 27 pipes that were 20 feet long and each bundle weighed over 60 lbs, it was quite a feat of human endurance.

We built our irst Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) latrine this trip in San Jose. The VIP latrine has a chimney which helps remove some of the foul smells from inside the latrine. The initial latrine was made for the volunteer house. We were able to train a local person, Apolinar, on construction techniques. He will run this project with DFM providing the materials that must be obtained outside the area such as cement and PVC pipe for the chimney and each home must providing all the labor and local materials. Six months ago, teachers from the school asked for some assistance in creating teaching kits in science and math. Representing the First Unitarian Church’s Honduras Project Committee – Teacher Resource Committee, Moritz Wagner and Barbara Gawinski, along with the team members from the Department of Family Medicine, personally delivered over 50 pounds of school supplies to the classrooms, three teacher science/math curriculum kits, and 250 books and resource books to four of the ive schools in the San Jose region: San Jose Centro, Portillon, Potreros, Guanacaste. Scholarship programs are also being started in the area.

We are always impressed by how much we can accomplish in two weeks when dedicated hard working people pool their collective energies and skills. There was a great synergy between this group and the many hard- working Hondurans. We are building a very strong relationship with the Hondurans that is already yielding many fruits. Our Global Health Program is maturing nicely and expanding to include The First Unitarian Church has provided new resources to the Hondurans through teacher education and potential for student scholarships. Thanks to everyone who has made this program a success.

National Primary Care Week

2008-10-12T15:15:00.000-04:00

National Primary Care Week: Lunch & Lecture Series
The Center for Primary Care, Department of Family Medicine, AMSA and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation present:

"Primary Care in the Developing World"
with
Dr. Doug Stockman
Clinical Associate Professor & Director of Global and Refugee Health

Case Method Room
Oct. 13, 2008
noon-1p.m.

Helping in Honduras

2008-10-12T13:45:00.001-04:00

University of Rochester Currents (link)

By Susan Hagen
susan.hagen@rochester.edu

In 1992, when Stephen Schultz was selecting his family medicine residency site, Rochester was at the top of the list. The School of Medicine and Dentistry’s program, established in 1968, was one of the oldest and most respected in the country.

Schultz, a Boston native who has worked for four months in a clinic in Kenya during medical school, was deeply committed to global heath care. He felt Rochester’s family medicine program could benefit from a global health track to help prepare future physician to practice in underdeveloped areas around the world.

A decade later, the University recruited Schultz to direct the family medicine program, giving him the opportunity to develop that focus: “I made having a global health track a condition to accepting the job.”

Under Schultz’s leadership, the University’s global health/family medicine residency program has become nationally recognized for its ongoing partnerships with several villages in the remote mountains of southwestern Honduras. At a time when competition for family medicine residents has tightened sharply, the global health track is credited with increasing applications to Rochester’s program by 25 percent. Today, 60 percent of the University’s incoming family medicine residents specialize in global and refugee health, a program directed by Doug Stockman, a clinical associate professor of family medicine.

At the center of the University’s program is its project in San José, Honduras. Home to seven small villages and some 2,000 indigenous residents, the San José area has no running water, no electricity, and no medical facilities. The area is impoverished; most households live on less than $1 a day. Twenty percent of children are malnourished.

“San José is the second poorest county, in the second poorest state, in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,” says Stockman.

Yet, it was the community’s wealth in human resources and its commitment to improve living conditions that convinced Schultz and Stockman to select the isolated region as their global health site in 2003. As part of the ongoing partnership, village residents have pledged to work side-by-side with the Rochester team to improve health care access and maintain numerous outreach projects. Rochester, in turn, contributes medical personnel, resources, and, perhaps most importantly, knowledge.

For two weeks each fall and spring, a brigade of about 15 residents, faculty members, nurses, dentists, medical students, and volunteers converge on the area. Using a converted storage shed and plastic sheeting to divide “examining rooms,” the team sees more than 100 patients each day, treating everything from congestive heart failure to parasites.

The Rochester program ties medical training to community development and takes a long-term view of health. In many ways, the patient care delivered during the biannual site visits are its smallest contribution to health.

“We treat acute infections, yes, but we also focus on the determinants of health: clean water, sanitation, clean air, and education,” says Schultz.

Curative medicine is only helpful in certain situations, adds Stockman: “You can’t write a prescription for better water.”

An example of the program’s more comprehensive commitment is its ventilated stove project. Villagers were suffering from multiple respiratory illnesses: bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia. An underlying cause, it turned out, was the use of open fire pits inside homes.

“The smoke was so thick,” remembers Schultz, “that I found myself involuntarily stooping to get out of the haze.”

In response, the global health team began working with villagers to install ventilated stoves. The program provides the chimney pipe and a metal plate at a cost of $25 per stove. To date, 140 stoves have been installed in the area, dramatically improving the indoor air quality for residents.

Water quality and access is another major focus. The program has provided support to complete a third 4,500 gallon holding tank, and has supplied a significant portion of the PVC pipe needed to bring water to 30 homes. The Rochester team is teaching local residents how to build ventilated improved pit latrines to protect the water supply, and providing low-tech solutions, like the inexpensive Potters for Peace clay water filters that reduce waterborne pathogens by 98 percent. Stockman says it’s a cost effective way “to save a child’s life.”

In an area where toothbrushes are about as rare as running water, the typical San José adult has lost nearly half of his or her teeth by age 25. To target young residents, Rochester’s program now provides local educators with a fluoride rinse that students use twice a week—a simple and inexpensive intervention that has reduced dental caries in children by 95 percent.

To make the effort self-sustaining, organizers have trained a community health worker to provide ongoing heath care services, and they have established a payment system to ensure medical supplies can be replenished.

“One of the things you learn when working in a very poor country,” explains Schultz, “is that, just like in the United States, there are different levels of poverty. There’s poor and then there is absolute poverty. We let the community decide who can afford to pay and who cannot.”

In this way, the program is able to replenish its supplies, without turning away the truly destitute—a better model, argues Schultz, than the free government clinics that operate closer to the cities. Those programs, says Schultz, “give away birth control and antibiotics, and then they run out. How helpful it that?”

The success of Rochester’s model of sustainability and community partnership has benefited from its collaboration with Shoulder to Shoulder, a national nonprofit that has helped build relationships between family medicine training programs and communities in resource-poor countries since 1990. Rochester was the third school to join the network, and remains one of the strongest participants, says Jeffrey Heck, Shoulder to Shoulder’s executive director.

“Rochester demonstrates best practices in terms of projects, meaningful relationships with the community, and long-term commitment,” says Heck, who notes that the program benefits both the Honduran communities as well as the U.S. participants by offering doctors a broader view of global health issues.

Elizabeth Brown, senior instructor of family medicine, agrees. “We are so accustomed to the wealth of this country. The trips encourage me to reevaluate what I think are necessities and to recommit to providing for underserved populations.”

University of Rochester Medical Center to provide help in Honduras

2008-10-12T13:37:00.002-04:00

An article appearing in the Democrat and Chronicle
Justina Wang • Staff writer • September 29, 2008

Link to original article

Next month, about a dozen University of Rochester Medical Center doctors, nurses and students will travel to Honduras to repair water filters, build cook stoves, hand out school supplies and talk with impoverished families.

It's not pure medical work, but they believe their helping hands could do more for the health of people in developing countries than any stethoscope or needle.

"It's so easy to see there that if you don't have clean water and your child gets diarrhea three times a year, then the intervention is clean water, not medicines," said Dr. Douglas Stockman, director of the university's global and refugee health program. "Prevention is probably more important than curative care."

Since 2003, Stockman and residency program director Dr. Steven Schultz have taken a medical brigade down to the village of San Jose, where there's no running water, electricity, hospitals or clinics.

The project is part of the national Shoulder to Shoulder effort to help the poor in Honduras, and URMC has committed to helping the village for at least 10 years.

In the last two years, the First Unitarian Church of Rochester has also joined the project, raising more than $70,000 for the San Jose area and sending one or two parishioners with the URMC team.

During the twice-yearly, two-week trips, the group has installed 140 ventilated stoves, built 4,500 gallon water tanks, supplied 578 pieces of PVC pipe to bring water to 30 homes, put water filters in 20 homes, helped construct latrines, trained midwives, and handed out fluoride rinse for schoolchildren.

In between the community work, half the doctors and residents also see patients and write prescriptions in a makeshift warehouse clinic, where students learn that medical issues aren't isolated from daily problems.

Children who drink infected water come in with worm and parasite infections.

Poverty takes the form of malnutrition and stunted growth. Open fires in homes without stoves lead to serious burns, bronchitis and asthma.

Adults who have had no medical attention in their lives come in with advanced cancers, untreated diabetes and high blood pressure, schizophrenia and psychoses that have never been diagnosed.

"It's sometimes very difficult to see the causalities and linkages," said Schultz. "Violence is a huge concern in Rochester, but is it a medical problem?

"Maybe violence is having an issue on the health of many members of the community, and maybe as a physician I should be looking at that, and not just concentrating on what I'm doing in the exam room."

First-year resident Donald McLaren, a 26-year-old from New York City and a son of Haitian immigrants, said this is exactly why he went to medical school.

He wants to work with diverse populations and is preparing for his first trip to Honduras on Oct.18 — brushing up on his Spanish and picking out a tent and sleeping bag to keep out mosquitoes and scorpions when he sleeps on the floor of an open cinderblock school.

"This is going to be a very interesting experience," he said. "I expect to be shocked, and I expect to do a lot for the community in Honduras."

JUWANG@DemocratandChronicle.com

Global Health Teaching Afternoon

2008-09-24T13:23:00.001-04:00

Global Health Teaching Afternoon

Department of Family Medicine777 S. Clinton Avenue

Thursday, Sept 25, 20082:15-5:15

2:15-2:30 International Sampling of Food Open to all attendees and FM staff.
Please bring a family favorite dish to pass to celebrate diversity of foods and people.

2:30-2:45 Honduras UpdatesDouglas Stockman MD, Medical Director, Highland Family Medicine; Director, Global and Refugee Health; Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine

2:45-3:15 San Jose Intibucá, Honduras ExperienceMatthew Malek, Third year medical student currently spending an International Medicine Year in San José at the DFM Site

3:15-4:15 Global Maternal and Child Health: A Case Study from TibetNancy Perini Chin, MPH, PhD Assistant Professor Division of Public Health Practice, Community & Preventive Medicine at UR

4:15-5:15 Pandemic Avian Influenza Vaccine DevelopmentJohn Treanor, MD Professor of Medicine and Microbiology and Immunology at UR

5:30 Global Health Book ClubInterpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

May 2008 Trip Report

2008-06-25T16:32:00.000-04:00

May 2008 Trip Report now available -

Trip Report 2008

May 2008 Brigade Photos

2008-05-29T11:43:00.000-04:00

The latest brigade made it back to Rochester safely - !

Photos from the brigade now posted

Trip report coming soon....

Send in the Latrines

2008-05-26T21:01:00.000-04:00

-The New York Times-

OPINION

| May 19, 2008

Op-Ed Contributor: Send in the Latrines

By ROSE GEORGE

Food, shelter and clean water are what aid agencies emphasize. But human excrement is a weapon of mass destruction, transferring diseases such as cholera, meningitis and typhoid.

Shop Amazon.com

2008-05-05T17:52:00.000-04:00

Everytime you use this Amazon.com link to buy something (excluding Auctions or zShops), San Jose Partners gets 4-8% of your purchase. And the best part is - You pay absolutely nothing extra! Thank you for your support!

Or browse our Bookstore!

Please take a moment to bookmark our Amazon.com page

Matt goes to San Jose!

2008-05-03T22:31:00.000-04:00

Matt Malek, a second year medical student, will be in San Jose next year!
See what he'll be doing!....

Global Health Teaching Afternoon

2008-04-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

University of Rochester/Highland Hospital

Family Medicine Residency

Global Health Teaching Afternoon

May 8, 2008

1-1:15

Introduction

1:15-2:00

Honduras Updates; Life and Medicine in Liberia and Ghana -

Douglas Stockman, MD, Medical Director, Highland Family Medicine, Director, Global and Refugee Health, Clinical Associate Professor of Family Medicine

2:00-2:45

History of the World Health Organization -

Theodore Brown, PhD., Professor in History, Health Services Research, and Community & Preventive Medicine

2:45-3:00

Break

3:00-3:45

Global Health, Communication, and Cultural Sensitivity in Rochester -

Daniel Yawman, MD, Clinical Instructor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine, Medical Director, Inpatient Pediatrics, Rochester General Hospital

3:45-4:00

Advocacy in Global Health -

Kirk Scirto, MD, Family Medicine PGY2

4:00-4:15

Global Health Council Conference -

Atif Chowdhry, MD, Family Medicine PGY2

4:15-5:15

Haiti Medical Volunteer Work -

Jeffrey Harp, MD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Lois VanTol, MD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine

Highland Hospital

1000 South Avenue

Collins Auditorium

Please call Nancy Phillips at 279.4840 for directions.

Dr. Athyal goes to Unite for Sight Conference

2008-04-21T13:25:00.000-04:00

Dear all,

I just returned from the Unite for Sight International 5th Annual Health Conference at Yale University. There were about 2,200 participants from all 50 states and 55 countries. The keynote speakers included Allan Rosenfield from Columbia, Jim Yong Kim from Harvard (Partners in Health director with Paul Farmer) and the well-known Drs. Jeffrey & Sonia Sachs. Dr. Kim stressed the growing need to explore global health delivery systems. Dr. Sachs spoke about global economics. I had the unique privilege of meeting with him briefly. He has a new book out entitled "Common Wealth".

I had the opportunity to present a talk on our work in Honduras, particularly focusing on the Slow Sand Filter project. I presented to a very active audience with many questions. I think our program is doing some very unique work with more of an emphasis in community development and preventive medicine. Nancy Chin also presented on her departments work in Tibet. I also met with Amanda Coyle, who is a NP at the UofR. She travelled with our team to Honduras in 2006.

Contact me if you're interested in hearing more. I would encourage anyone to attend and present at this conference next year! I think people should hear about the great work we are doing in Honduras.

Cheers,

Vidu

Vidush P. Athyal, MD, MPH

Departmental Fellow/Clinical Instructor

University of Rochester Medical Center

Highland Family Medicine

777 South Clinton Avenue, Suite 500

Rochester, New York 14620

Vidush_Athyal

URMC.Rochester

dot

edu

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