Among the many memories DMU students acquired in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, the visual images stick like one’s t-shirt in the island nation’s oven-like temperatures: the once-beautiful capitol building in ruins. People eating and bathing wherever they found a working hydrant. Endless tent cities. The Haitian people, hopeful but demoralized by the devastation, living moment by moment amid monumental loss. And the garbage – growing piles, plains and mountains of it.

“We saw a garbage truck by the side of a road, and men were shoveling garbage into the back,” says Amy Borden, D.O.’13. “Where were they going to put it? And where do you even start?”

Borden, also a student in DMU’s master of public health program, was one of six students who provided care in Haiti in June. Fellow group member Kathie Palmersheim describes another image: a little girl they treated for a sprained ankle.

The DMU group treats patients in a church, while the nation struggles to recover.

“She was the happiest girl, but both her parents had died in the quake,” says Palmersheim, a second-year podiatric medicine student who also is pursuing her master’s degree in health care administration. “We gave her a Frisbee and played with her for a while. It was hard not to be able to fix all of their problems.”

Still, the students shared a tireless drive to help as much and as compassionately as they could. A non-governmental organization and the United Nations placed them in a clinic set up in a church on the outskirts of Port au Prince. With only intermittent electricity and no running water, they worked with French and Creole translators to treat patients for a wide variety of conditions caused by the quake as well as the country’s deep poverty. Wounds, dehydration, malnutrition, malaria, infections, parasitic diseases, sexually transmitted diseases and depression were among the conditions their patients presented.

The DMU group also treated more than 100 children brought to the church from an orphanage. In all, they saw nearly 850 patients. “The [local] staff and students worked great together,” says Jennifer Chambers, a student in the master of public health degree program. “We weren’t afraid to ask for help, step in if someone needed a break, assist with wound care or holding a baby during a visit.”

The group dynamic and guidance from clinic physicians boosted the students’ confidence, adds Michelle Gombas, a third-year osteopathic medicine student. “I was nervous until a few patients in – then it just goes away,” she notes. “You get into a rhythm, you realize you won’t know everything and you just go.”

The students agree the trip affirmed why they chose to pursue careers in health care. “After a really tough first year of medical school, it reminds me why we want to do this,” Borden says. “What I know is not a lot, but it was enough to help some people. The team really wanted to work; Haiti let us. I feel really privileged to have gone.”

Learn more about the global health department at DMU and about a recent trip to Guatemala.

Joe Kimbell helps meet the need for medical care in Guatemala.

In a mountainous village in Guatemala, Natalie Hinchcliffe positioned her stethoscope on a female patient’s chest. Not a sound from the woman’s left lung field. Now what?

With just one year of her osteopathic medical education under her belt, Hinchcliffe had been both excited and nervous about DMU’s first medical service trip to Guatemala in June. She had taken her physical diagnosis tools home to practice on family members before the group left. In that Guatemalan clinic, she felt the need to hurry; there were many more patients to see. And just how many lungs had she listened to, after all?

Students Kayla Bliton, wearing the green hairband, and Jackie Nehls, behind her, examine children during DMU’s first medical service trip to Guatemala.

Still, Hinchcliffe asked the supervising physician, Des Moines physician and DMU global health adjunct faculty member Chandra Batra, M.D., to listen to the woman’s lung. He decided to send the patient to a hospital for an x-ray, which revealed the presence of tuberculosis or cancer and the need for further treatment.

That experience taught Hinchcliffe that often in health care, just being there is what counts.

“I was physically present to do what many others can do, to listen to that woman’s lungs,” she says. “You just have to care enough to want to be there.”

Hinchcliffe and five other DMU students spent 10 days in the Central American country, treating nearly 200 patients in mountain villages, homes and at a clinic supported by the Des Moines-based outreach ministry, Scott Missions. Communication was a challenge: Each team worked with two translators, from English to Spanish and from Spanish to the indigenous Mayan language.

“I would ask a question, and after translation the patient would talk for a while,” says Kayla Bliton, D.O.’13. “A lot of the patients had a lot of issues, so it took time. We needed to see 40 patients a day, but we also wanted to take the time to help everyone and convey empathy while interacting through translators.”

Common conditions among their patients included scabies, parasites, infections and issues related to many Guatemalans’ physically challenging lifestyles.

“Women carry babies on their backs and big, heavy loads on their heads and shoulders,” noted Megan DeBlieck, D.P.T’11. “The farmers carry huge sacks, which they haul with a strap across their foreheads.”

A view of in the mountainous landscape in Guatemala, a Central American country.

Such tolls on patients’ bodies made her physical therapy skills especially valuable. DeBlieck, who worked with Elizabeth Harden, D.P.T.’06, during the trip, recalls a couple in their 70s; the husband had Parkinson’s disease, and his wife was his main caretaker.

“I was teaching her alternative ways to help get him ready for the day, such as transferring him from the bed to a chair,” she says. “I gave her a gait belt. She was so willing to learn.”

Despite the challenges the group faced – including intestinal issues and harrowing drives on hairpin mountain switchbacks (“you just said a prayer every time you got into the van,” Harden says) – they agree the experience benefited them in multiple ways, from the chance to work as a medical team to the skills, friendships and perspectives they gained.

“The thing that stands out most for me was seeing all these people who, if they lived in America, wouldn’t have their problems,” says Joe Kimbell, D.O.’13. “Many had nothing, but they were so grateful and enjoy the simple things in life. That really sticks with me.”

Learn more about the global health department at DMU and read about a recent trip to Haiti.

In her Peace Corps work, education,
research and practice, Jenell Stewart
has strived to follow an uncle’s advice
to “put a heartfelt effort into this life.”

Three years ago, Jenell Stewart,
D.O.’12, M.P.H.’12, was working
with a group of women in Jirapa,
Ghana, to build a bakery that
would create employment
opportunities and, as a result,
help reduce poverty in the area.
In her 27 months as a Peace Corps
volunteer in the West African country,
she also educated people about Guinea
worm disease, encouraged behaviors
that help prevent HIV/AIDS, taught
people living with HIV/AIDS how to
make soap to earn money, and
organized volleyball teams among
local men as a way to make them
aware of their often-sexist remarks.

This summer, Stewart took her good
works for women to a global level:
During a nine-week internship at the
World Health Organization in Geneva,
Switzerland, she developed a training
course designed to educate front-line
health care providers on gender-
responsive health care. She notes that
gender-related health care disparities
are made worse for women in poor
countries where they face discrimination.

“Countries and communities where women have lesser rights, independence or economic standing than men often see notable differences in the health of men and women,” she says.

The WHO’s 2009 “Women and Health Report,” Stewart adds, highlighted the need to strengthen health systems to better meet women’s needs in terms of access, comprehensiveness and responsiveness. She hopes her training course will help achieve that, including in Ghana.

“We hope to do a field test in Ghana soon,” she says. “Between my supervisors’ professional contacts in Ghana’s Ministry of Health Department and mine in Peace Corps Ghana, we should be able to locate some communities that would benefit and be receptive to testing it.”

Meanwhile, Stewart is in a year-long rotation at St. John Macomb Oakland Hospital in Warren, MI, Detroit’s largest suburb. She expected to observe other kinds of disparities there.

“There is so much diversity there not just in race and ethnicity, but also religion, economic, etc. Also, it is such a tumultuous time for so many in the current economic environment [in Detroit],” she says. “I expect that I will learn about medicine in a broader context as I observe and work with patients to find practical solutions to their health issues among complex barriers.”

Stewart plans to continue bringing dual perspectives from osteopathic medicine and public health to her work. “I have become even more inspired and focused on finding my niche in the big picture of public health as a clinician working one on one with patients,” she says.