2 weeks in: Alright, this is going to be a quick update of the new direction we’re going to try to be taking Global
Medical Brigades. As anyone that has ever been on a brigade knows, GMB is an incredible international student run
volunteer organization. However, there has been some criticism of our longterm sustainability, that while it is
important to empower students, without the ability to make a long-lasting sustainable change within these
communities, we’re not accomplishing as much as we could be. And we agree. I was able to go on my first brigades
as a doctor with Depaul University, and I was able to see firsthand many of the problems that our current system
creates. We are therefore going to be instituting some changes as well as implementing some new programs to help
our program grow into what it needs to be.
#1: Change in brigade format – this is going to be subtle but hopefully very helpful. We are still going to run
brigades in the same general pattern, but we are going to change our patient intake sheets in order to facilitate
questioning. The biggest holdup in our brigade process is difficulty with translation. We will therefore be
providing translators with an algorithm of questioning in order to speed the process of dealing with our most common
diagnoses. This will hopefully allow doctors to speed our patients through that don’t need a lot of time, and allow
them to focus on patients with more complicated complaints.
#2: We will begin to issue health cards to all patients seen by a brigade. This will begin our process of longterm
management, and allow other institutions such as local hospitals to see what we have been doing. It will also allow
us to follow chronic conditions like hypertension and diabetes, and do growth screening questions on children.
#3: Finally we have begun our data collection. Granted that involves in incredible amount of mind-numbing data
entry, but soon we will have some basic information about what we do in each of the communities we visit.
#4: Lastly, and most important, we are going to have a trial run of our new Community Health Worker program by the
end of the summer (political unrest not withstanding). Daisy, Hiral, and Jon are heading up this program and have a
fantastic training schedule completed on how to train community members as health care workers. This will allow
followup, data collection, and some triage and identification of patients to happen between brigades. This is the
single most important step to allowing medical brigades to transition from relief work to long term sustainable
health care infrastructure.
“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
– John Lennon, Imagine
