Hello everyone.
My name is Roberta Duarte.
I'm a senior at Mount Holyoke College,
and I self-designed my major in global public health
with a concentration in social behavioral science.
And today, I'll be talking about my summer
internship in South America.
So this internship took place in Asunción, Paraguay.
I was an assistant for a public health project coordinator,
and I got this internship through the Ministry of Public
Health and Social Welfare.
This internship-- there wasn't really this position,
so I had to negotiate with the Ministry of Health.
So the reason why I want to go into Paraguay
is because I was raised but I designed my major here,
and I had this whole idea of what
public health means in the US.
And then my sophomore year, I went abroad.
I went to Costa Rica, and I had this global perspective
what public health was in that country.
So being passionate about this field,
I wanted to go back home and see what really means public health
there, and if I want to go back home and pursue
that field there.
So thanks to SENEPA, the National Malaria Eradication
Center, the Regional Hospital of Luque,
and the National University of Asunción School of Medicine,
I was allowed to do this.
So I'm going to start talking about SENEPA.
So SENEPA is the National Malaria Eradication Center.
It was established in 1950, and by then, the country
was 90% infected with malaria.
So that's how this was established.
And it wasn't until the '70s that they
started looking into other vector-borne diseases
like yellow fever, Chagas, and dengue fever,
which was most of what I was focusing on.
And this is the headquarters-- we have 18 offices--
SENEPA [INAUDIBLE] headquarters, and that
is where I did most of my training,
and especially with a focus in field work.
So as you can see here, my pictures,
I was going from city to rural cities in the nation
and collecting [INAUDIBLE] samples
to take later to the laboratory and see if these [INAUDIBLE]
were infected and if that population was at risk
of getting dengue fever.
I was also going house to house, and it was OK, [INAUDIBLE]
prevention.
Just getting flyers, we'll go house to house.
If it was an epidemiology perspective of the prevention
that we were trying to do, I would
go like one house per block or two house per block.
So it was really interesting because I
had no idea how this field work actually worked.
And just also educating land owners and house
owners of what is dengue fever.
Dengue fever has been in the country for 15 years now,
and it's been from dengue 1 to 4, so it's been mutated,
and it's a big [INAUDIBLE] in Paraguay.
So this is the portion where I actually
did most of like an office experience,
and it was in the epidemiology department at the Regional
Hospital of Luque.
This was one of the biggest hospitals in the nation.
So there's 18 sanitary districts in Paraguay.
This is number 11.
And in this hospital, we were in charge of 56 dams.
So I was required to take an epidemiology course
for this portion of my internship.
And I took a 600 level at UMass-- a graduate class
where I was exposed to many softwares
and just what epidemiology is in the US.
And so I was really excited to actually go back to Paraguay
and implement whatever I learned.
Ended up being like a totally different world.
You know, from computers to software
to all these textbooks.
I ended up having a lot of papers, maps, notebooks
that were [INAUDIBLE].
And there was literally not much I could do.
I was shocked.
But I mean I helped as much as I could.
And as I mentioned in my abstract,
I also had this nutrition aspect of my internship,
and that's when I was working in this office.
So this was my office.
We had four tables, one computer-- my boss's computer,
and there was a nurse in this table that
was in charge of the nutrition program in that region.
And it's interesting-- one people per program.
And this is like 56 towns that we were looking at.
So I was working with a nutritionist-- going
to schools, negotiating if we're [INAUDIBLE] just work
with parents, or with the community,
or with just the teens, or the professors.
So that was a really cool and different experience as well.
So that's more like epidemiology [INAUDIBLE] experience.
And then I mentioned that National University of Asunción
School of Medicine.
And this portion of my internship
was, I wanted to know what public health means
in the academia field.
So I want to know what people were learning
about public health, and who were
learning about public health.
And end up being that public health is just
a graduate program.
They don't have undergrad.
We barely have it in the US.
It's just a recent field.
That's why I'm deciding my major here.
But it ended up being that now it's required for doctors--
any professional that wants to carry a leadership role,
they have to have a public health degree to do that.
So this was really cool, because I was comparing the data,
and it allowed me to see exactly what's going on
and network with professionals, doctors, professors,
and see their perspective, what's going on,
and I should do next.
So overall, I did analyze, implement, and promote
new and creative solutions to address dengue fever
and nutrition challenges in the country,
but there were definitely advantages and disadvantages--
I can talk for hours about them, but two really big ones
that I will never forget, it's the politics
that I had to face.
So advantages of politics were, OK, well, I was at a time
where there were a lot of people running for mayor.
There's a lot of money being put in those campaigns,
and I was in that moment where it's just really hectic.
And I realized, like, OK, this is
a time where I'm experiencing one of the biggest moments,
and I can take that for future reference.
And then disadvantage was we couldn't do much
because things were stopped by politicians,
or, OK, my director was from this party--
we can't implement this other option
because the doctor's from a different politic party.
So it was really interesting to have that perspective.
And then [INAUDIBLE].
This was there over the summer, and a lot of things
changed thanks to his visit.
There was a lot of new public health programs.
Hospitals were really organized because having
such a personality in the country that was was
[INAUDIBLE] made us change a lot of things.
But a disadvantage was I was raised throughout my career
life in the US.
And I'm really used to calendars and today's this,
and tomorrow's that, and 7:00 PM is 7:00 PM.
There were days I would get ready to go to work
and the roads were just closed.
I couldn't go.
We didn't know what-- it was like--
I never experienced being in a war,
but I feel like it was being in a war, because I couldn't
leave my house, things were closed,
and no one knew exactly why.
So that was kind of a disadvantage to actually make
things happen on time.
But overall, I accomplished my goal.
I understand what public health is.
I know that I'm not going back after graduation.
I'm going to do more studying here.
I'm going to go to school hopefully for public health
or something related with environmental health science,
because that's a field that's needed in Paraguay right now.
And [INAUDIBLE] those two fields.
And public health is just growing,
and there's nothing really specific about it,
that's why [INAUDIBLE].
So we'll see what happens.
But I did accomplish my goal.
And last but not least, I just want
to thank all these organizations that
helped me pursue this internship that's
very important for me and for my future career goals.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]