CDU Team Rises Up In Zambia and Malawi
An eclectic group of fourteen representatives from the CDU Office of International Affairs, the College of Medicine, the Urban Health Institute, and the Board of Trustees travelled to Zambia and Malawi to continue its work developing the Rise Up! Initiative. This was the first official return trip to East Africa since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The mission was aligned with the CDU Advantage Pillar, Global Experience, i. e., the universalization of health sciences while cultivating and undertaking a transnational health agenda. Also on hand were project partners from Meharry College of Medicine, the Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Howard University College of Medicine. COM Dean Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Office of International Affairs Director Dr. Lejeune Lockett are the University’ s Co-Principal Investigators.
A HRSA grant funded the study and ongoing treatment of HIV amongst adolescent girls. The trip was an opportunity to augment additional educational and recreational activities provided by local government resources, as well as offer a safe place for participants. The sessions are conducted in a house arranged in the manner of a youth center.
“ Every house has a clinical aspect to it,” according to Office of International Affairs program manager Sana Abbasi. There are workshops that include discussion of domestic violence incidence in a safe place away from the young women’ s family group. Attendees are both HIV-positive and HIV-negative. Some of the girls are already taking the anti-HIV medication PrEP.
In every single house the team visited, every participant was excited to try new things and participate in new activities, whether it was yoga, dance or mask making. Says Abbasi,“ I just wanted them to be able to speak their truths, whatever they were. And I feel like when you bring people together and you put happiness or art therapy in the middle, their true selves come out. Every single house made us gifts. All of us. They had pictures of Dean Deborah and Dr. Vargas on the walls,” she noted.
The overall project team was responsible for a variety of tasks as service providers, and documented encounters with the participants. Everyone was assigned to a specific team, such as the wellness team or the data entry team led by Dr. Roberto Vargas. According to your specialization or role, the group collectively worked together. Time was spent our either discussing ideas with the local peer navigators, interacting with project leadership, or communicating with
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