Three faculty members from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics traveled to Cusco, Peru in September, as part of the college’s Public Health Beyond Borders (PHBB) initiative. PHBB allows Temple students and faculty to devise and deliver health programs to underserved communities around the world, in collaboration with local organizations in other countries.
“Our vision for the initiative is that we are going to provide training opportunities for students and build global research collaborations with institutions, governments and our community partners,” says assistant professor Graciela Jaschek, who was one of the founders of PHBB as a doctoral student at the University of Maryland in 2013 and now oversees the program’s implementation at Temple.
Jaschek was joined on the Peru trip by associate professor Inkyu Han, who specializes in environmental health and exposure assessment, and assistant professor Kirsten Wiens, an infectious disease epidemiologist. They met with leaders and public health students at the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC) and with officials of Cusco’s health ministry. They also visited Combapata, a town about two hours south of the city. The goal is to return with faculty and students to conduct collaborative research and initiate community programs in Cusco and the province of La Convención.
Han studies the impact of environmental factors on population health, including air pollution and heat exposure. On the Peru visit he made observations and gathered preliminary ideas for community-engaged environmental health research. Air pollution is a growing threat to public health, especially in low- and middle-income countries like Peru, he said during a seminar at Temple recapping the trip. Han spoke about how local manufacturing activities like brickmaking in rural Peru may contribute to air pollution and noted that some homes burn discarded tires as a fuel source for cooking.
“Local communities want to solve potential health issues specifically stemming from air pollution generated by local sources within their neighborhoods,” Han said. He hopes to return with faculty and students to collect data and begin a community-engaged research project with local partners to address air quality issues.
Wiens, who examines infectious disease surveillance systems, had productive conversations with Cusco health officials. “We heard from them about research projects that they are interested in collaborating with us on, areas that would intersect with our research interests,” she said. “One of the things that came out of those discussions was their strong interest in better understanding the burden of respiratory infections in hard-to-reach communities. They're interested in using a lot of methods that I use in my own research, so it's potentially a very exciting opportunity for synergies.” She said the aim is to build a partnership of community members, students at UNSAAC and Temple, and elected officials to “make sure that these results are translational...to have a direct impact on policy in these regions.”
Jaschek teaches a Public Health Beyond Borders class at Temple as prerequisite for student travel. Students develop and deliver educational activities and materials based on needs assessments, typically focusing on health issues such as nutrition, personal hygiene, mental health through physical activity, bullying, menstrual health, gender equity, communication with parents, and health communications for health promoters. Students participating in the Public Health Beyond Borders program at Temple have had opportunities to interact in class with students in Peru, the Dominican Republic and India, and in many cases travel to overseas communities.
This semester, the class has been communicating with faculty and students at Mahatma Gandhi Mission Dental College & Hospital in Navi Mumbai. They plan an overseas trip there in January. Jaschek says student travel opportunity is limited mostly by the expense.
“I want students to focus on reducing health disparities and promoting healthy behaviors,” Jaschek says. “I want them to have those opportunities, and it’s important that we expose them to ethical and responsible work in global communities.”