Applications were reviewed by three teams from the Global Nursing Advisory Council (GNAC) joined by faculty who received awards in previous years. Award amounts are primarily based on airfare to the destination. We were still unable to fund all who applied. Through the GNAC we have focused our areas of support so that students and faculty are helping expand our capacity in global health but also are involved in sustainable work, either through service that can be built on from year to year, or in developing scholarship opportunities. We are particularly pleased to award two Cronenwett Global Awards designated for undergraduate students (see Global Study Award Helps Students Gain World Experiences).

We continue our long time relationship with Guatemala through Chris Harlan, Oaxaca through Norma Hawthorne, and Kenya both for Reach Out through adjunct faculty Dr. Pam McQuide and for Carolina for Kibera, which is a non-profit started by a former Carolina student. The Atlantis Project is a campus project in Portugal that through our students has developed ongoing work in health care. We have faculty and doctoral students who were active in the Thai International Nursing Conference and now the International Family Conference, both excellent scholarship development opportunities. We are pleased to have these outstanding Global Ambassadors! Visit the SON Global Health web page http://nursing.unc.edu/globalhealth, primarily built by Graduate Assistant Christina Kim.

 2011 Global Health Awards

Linda H. Cronenwett (center) with Tina Evans (left) and Rebeca Moretto (right), the 2011 recipients of the Cronenwett Global Study Award.

The Cronenwett Global Study Award was created by a private gift from a SON alumna and her husband to honor the leadership of Linda H. Cronenwett, immediate past dean of the SON, and her passion for improving quality and safety in health care. This year’s recipients are BSN students Tina Evans and Rebeca Moretto. They will both be traveling internationally this summer as part of N489, SON’s Practicum in Nursing Global Health Experience.

Evans will spend four to five weeks in Antigua, Guatemala volunteering at Casa Jackson, an inpatient center for malnourished children. She then plans to spend six to seven weeks in Jutiapa, Guatemala, where she will work on the nursing staff in the maternity department of the Hospital Nacional de Jutiapa. She will also introduce the work of doulas to their maternity care in an effort to increase natural comfort measures in laboring women.

Moretto will be collaborating with two obstetric attending physicians in the high-risk OB/GYN department at the Antigua, Guatemala/Hospital Nacional. She will be assisting them by acting as a doula to the women and helping with deliveries. In addition, she will conduct public health education outreach for the traditional midwives in the area regarding topics including sterile technique and postpartum care of mother and newborn.

You can contribute to the Cronenwett Global Study Award at https://secure.dev.unc.edu/gift/son/.

Clinical Assistant Professor Jean Davison was the SON Course Coordinator and Team Leader for the multidisciplinary group, which included 20 students and nine volunteers who included two doctors, three nurse practitioners and two pharmacists. Nine of the students were from the School of Nursing.

View a slide show of pictures from their trip  here.

SON Association of Student Nurses helped collect vitamins and over the counter medications for the Honduras trip.

The group saw and treated over 1600 people with anti-parasitic treatment, vitamins, and medications. They gave pizza and gifts to children of a feeding program and fed over 30 families with a week’s worth of food. They also provided school supplies, book bags, clothes and toys to many children in the clinics and at the hospital.

Among the places they visited was  Oropoli, a very isolated site that took four hours to reach and had no medical facility nearby. The group spent the night there in an open building on a cement floor.

Facts about Honduras:

• Honduras is ranked 95th for mortality rate of children under 5
• Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of mortality
• 10% of infants are born with low birth weight
• 26% of non-pregnant women and 32 % of pregnant women were anemic
• Skilled attendant at 67 % of deliveries  (2000-2006)
• 54% of population uses adequate sanitation facilities in rural areas (2004)

On March 21^st, you are encouraged to watch a video Down Syndrome International has developed called “Will You Let Us In.” The hope is that if people all over the world watch this video it will help create a single global voice advocating for the rights, inclusion and well-being of people with Down syndrome.

SON Associate Professor Dr. Marcia Van Riper has been doing research with families of children with Down syndrome for over 30 years. Currently, she is working on a study about adaptation and resilience that eventually will include families from at least 6-10 countries. So far, over 250 parents from the US have participated, and data collection with families in other countries is just getting started. Next week, she will be giving a presentation at a conference in Thailand  and  after the conference she will meet with a professor in Thailand who has expressed interest in helping her collect data from parents of children with Down syndrome in Thailand. 

The original Polyglot: Multimedia Medical Spanish Translator was developed in 1999 by a Duke University medical student, BJ Lawson. Since 1999, the Duke AHEC Program has distributed CD-ROM versions of Polyglot to healthcare providers and health professions students across North Carolina with the support of the NC AHEC Program. One past user of Polyglot stated, “The program helped me tremendously in learning certain phrases.” Polyglot Med Spanish is available for use on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad.

While you are sitting in a café or waiting at the airport, you can practice medical words, phrases, or entire assessment questions. If you need to conduct a mental health assessment or a prenatal assessment on a Spanish-speaking patient, it has the phrases you need to get started. Polyglot Med Spanish offers phrases categorized in conversations to allow the health care provider to practice a series of assessment or conversational questions structures to solicit a “yes” or “no” response. Users can create their “favorites” list, so that locating their most frequently used phrases or questions fast and easy.

The voice of Polyglot Med Spanish is Alicia Gonzalez, MSN, RN, CS. Ms. Gonzalez, born in Honduras, is a Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist and has worked with the NC AHEC Program developing and presenting beginning Spanish programs for healthcare providers, including Latino culture and cultural differences since 1998. “Many health care providers work with patients who are predominately Spanish-speaking on a daily basis. Polyglot Med Spanish is designed to teach them the common clinical phrases for use in their work setting. Saying even a few phrases in Spanish to their patient will communicate much more than just that statement. It communicates your interest and motivation to work with them” said Ms. Gonzalez.

The Polyglot Med Spanish app is now available in the App Store. From February 28th to April 7th the app will be available for FREE. Visit the App store to get a copy or click here for more information.

Mary Lou de Leon Siantz, PhD, RN, FAAN

Mary Lou de Leon Siantz, (PhD, RN, FAAN) the assistant dean of diversity and cultural affairs at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, will present her research on immigrant and migrant children in “Children of the Road,” the 2011 UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing Ethnic Minority Visiting Scholar Lecture. This free lecture is open to the public and will take place from 3:00-5:00 pm on February 21, 2011 at the School of Nursing.

de Leon Siantz was born in Los Angeles of Mexican immigrant parents. She has spent her career in community health nursing advancing immigrant mental health through research, education and national leadership. “One of the fastest growing populations in the United States is children of immigrants, yet very little is known about them,” she said. “So I studied the children and continue to do research and provide consultation in this area.”

For example, she is currently investigating how to reduce pregnancy and promote reproductive health among Latina girls in work supported by the Office of Minority Health, Department of Health and Human Service. “The risk for premature birth is greatly increased because of the teen’s developmental stage and lack of access to prenatal care in this group. Pregnancy is one of the top reasons that Latina girls drop out of school,” she said.

During de Leon Siantz’s time as the National Mental Health Coordinator for Migrant Head Start, she developed a national network of mental health professionals who provided training and technical assistance for the implementation of the federal mental health standards to local Head Start mental health program directors and classroom teachers.  This national network educated Head Start staff on the mental health needs of children of migratory workers.

In addition, she established the Milagros Center of Excellence in Migrant Health, a training and technical center that translated research on migrant health into practice through a congressional earmark in partnership with the Hon. Ruben Hinojosa’s congressional district in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. She also led in the development of a multicultural minor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, integrating her clinical and research expertise into the course on migration and health.

She served on the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Advisory Committee on Infant Mortality for two terms during the Clinton and Bush administrations. The committee advised the Secretary of Health and Human Service on the research and intervention needed to eliminate infant mortality among African Americans, which resulted in an evidenced-based curriculum focused on reproductive health. “I felt it was very important for public health nurses to be a part of this program,” she said. She brought in University of Pennsylvania student nurses to participate in the program along with pre-med and medical students from historically black colleges and universities. The opportunity has provided student nurses with experiences in a national interdisciplinary network as well as the ability to become pre-conceptual peer educators at the University of Pennsylvania and in the local communities of Philadelphia which experiences a high percentage of infant mortality among its African American population.

de Leon Siantz was the founding member and former President of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses. She also served as a member of the National Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine Committees on the Health Status of Immigrant Children, Patient Safety and the Workforce Environment and on the National Institute for Nursing Research’s National Advisory Council. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Latino Children’s Institute and the Health Subcommittee, Office of Migrant Education, U.S. Department of Education.

In addition to giving the “Children of the Road” lecture, de Leon Siantz will speak to those involved in health care at UNC Hospitals on the importance of cultural competency in the 21st Century and the development of Latino community partnerships, and she will share with School of Nursing students about her professional journey as a Latina nurse.

The Ethnic Minority Visiting Scholar Lecture series was established at the UNC Chapel Hill School of Nursing in 2000 as an initiative to highlight the research and contributions of ethnic minority nurse scholars. The lecture brings outstanding specialists, educators, clinical researchers and directors to Chapel Hill for discussion of timely nursing matters affecting ethnic and minority populations.

The Ethnic Minority Visiting Scholar Lecture will be presented in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Nursing Fox Auditorium located on the L level of Carrington Hall (corner of S. Columbia St and Medical Dr.). Parking will be available in the Dogwood Visitors Deck (directly across from UNC hospitals). For more information, please e-mail Dr. Diane Berry at dberry@email.unc.edu. Directions are available here.

Tiffany Young, BSN ’99, has been in Haiti since June working as a Medical Program Coordinator for Samaritan’s Purse (photo and video courtesy of Samaritan’s Purse) . Health care teams in Haiti are now on the front lines of the cholera epidemic there. See Tiffany hard at work in the video below.

UNC Global Health Fair

The UNC School of Nursing Global Health Expo 2010 will be held September 30th and October 5th from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. in the main lobby and mezzanine of the school’s addition. Come see posters and other visual displays of the school’s global experiences during the last year. Pizza will be served. Posters will remain up until October 8. E-mail songlobalhealth@unc.edu for more information.

Minh Nguyen and Dr. Linda Cronenwett

Minh Nguyen has just returned from a summer trip to Vietnam that was part of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Nursing’s Summer Global Experience.  He was the recipient of the Cronenwett Global Study Award, created by a private gift to honor Dean Emerita Linda H. Cronenwett.  Read about his experience:

Prior to the trip, I knew there was a big gap between the health care systems of Vietnam and the US. Among the differences, the lack of infection control posed the biggest threat to the health and safety of the patients. The hospitals in Vietnam are overcrowded and lack resources, and overuse of antibiotics has increased infection rates.

Because of these problems I wanted to do a project to reduce the infection rate by increasing hand washing compliance since hand washing has proved to be the most effective, and simplest, method. My plan was to spend a week observing at a hospital in Vinh city, another week for planning the interventions and the rest of the time implementing and evaluating those interventions.

I began by observing the hospital’s infection control policies, hand washing compliance and nursing care. I noticed that the relationship between the patients and healthcare workers in Vietnam was much different than in the US. Patients and family members feared the healthcare workers. In the US, our patients are our clients, and they have the right to demand the best care. However, in Vietnam, that right seemed to not exist.

During the week of observing, I noticed that the hand washing compliance was not high. Many physicians and nurses did not wash their hands before touching the patients or between patients. Family members were the biggest sources of infection since they were the main caregivers and had the most contact with the patients.

Through research, I learned that no single intervention was effective in increasing the hand washing compliance. I needed a series of interventions including education, feedback, supervision, motivation and reminders. I discussed my plan with the head nurse, and after several modifications, we started the project in the NICU and Resuscitation Unit.

Before implementing the interventions, we surveyed the attitudes and knowledge of the staff on hand washing and infection control and their perceived barriers to hand washing. Most of staff understood the importance of hand washing and the correct techniques. I started with classes on cross infection, the importance and techniques of hand washing. With the staff, I created a video using the techniques recommended by the Ministry of Health. I also used a Glo-germ hand washing kit to make the class more interactive and interesting. This was the first time that I was able to utilize what I learned in class to in a real world setting.

After this summer, I can see that my confidence has increased. I was able to work independently in a new working environment. My leadership and communication skills were sharpened, and I carried out my project successfully. I hope that I will be able to keep a professional relationship with the hospital and continue to help them to increase hand washing compliance. I also realized that infection control is a great field because it is one of the most important aspects in patient safety. By controlling the infection rate, we are reducing the mortality rate.