Medical/Dental Brigades: The goal of Medical Brigades is to improve access to healthcare for rural community members by offering complete comprehensive consultation services through brigades medical clinics. To improve access, our program organizes brigades in a mobile-clinic type fashion with the help of community leaders and volunteers. Medical Brigades works in many communities that eventually will become Holistic Communities, complete with projects from all of our other programs. Global Brigades visits each community twice a year at ~6-month intervals and each time before each brigade the team conducts a community visit. The community visit consists of a meeting with community leaders and volunteers to prepare them for the upcoming brigade and outline their contribution to the brigade.
The brigade offers comprehensive care in the moment of the brigade including triage, general consultation, gynecology, dental care, an educational health presentation for children and adults, and a pharmacy. Each patient will leave the brigade with a complete consultation, preventative education, and appropriate medicine, for current problems presented at the moment of consultation and for prevention of common problems that undoubtedly will arise in the time before the following brigade. Implementation involves student work, medical professional expertise, and medical supplies and medication.
Global Medical Brigades provides a holistic model for sustainable health care in under-served rural communities by conducting preliminary needs assessments, treating patients to the highest ethical standards, sponsoring referrals to those with needs beyond our capability, and recording data for the production of quantitative reports and to create patient health files.
There are generally six main stations run during each mobile clinic,
including intake, triage, consultation, a dental station, a pharmacy, and a station for educational workshops. Each brigade may also add additional stations, like gynecology, vaccinations, physical therapy, sexual education, and optometry stations.
The UConn chapter organizes on average 2 medical brigades per year, in which students and medical professionals travel to under-served communities in Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, or Ghana to provide medical relief. As an organization dedicated to service, it is our goal to make an impact on these communities by recruiting students and healthcare professionals for each brigade, raising money to purchase medications, collecting donations, and running each brigade. Not only do we want to provide therapeutic care, but it is also our goal to provide preventative care and improve sustainability. Global Brigades empowers communities with little access to healthcare in order to make themselves self-sustainable in the future.
For more information, please visit www.globalbrigades.org/medical-methodology.
The brigade offers comprehensive care in the moment of the brigade including triage, general consultation, gynecology, dental care, an educational health presentation for children and adults, and a pharmacy. Each patient will leave the brigade with a complete consultation, preventative education, and appropriate medicine, for current problems presented at the moment of consultation and for prevention of common problems that undoubtedly will arise in the time before the following brigade. Implementation involves student work, medical professional expertise, and medical supplies and medication.
Global Medical Brigades provides a holistic model for sustainable health care in under-served rural communities by conducting preliminary needs assessments, treating patients to the highest ethical standards, sponsoring referrals to those with needs beyond our capability, and recording data for the production of quantitative reports and to create patient health files.
There are generally six main stations run during each mobile clinic,
including intake, triage, consultation, a dental station, a pharmacy, and a station for educational workshops. Each brigade may also add additional stations, like gynecology, vaccinations, physical therapy, sexual education, and optometry stations.
The UConn chapter organizes on average 2 medical brigades per year, in which students and medical professionals travel to under-served communities in Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, or Ghana to provide medical relief. As an organization dedicated to service, it is our goal to make an impact on these communities by recruiting students and healthcare professionals for each brigade, raising money to purchase medications, collecting donations, and running each brigade. Not only do we want to provide therapeutic care, but it is also our goal to provide preventative care and improve sustainability. Global Brigades empowers communities with little access to healthcare in order to make themselves self-sustainable in the future.
For more information, please visit www.globalbrigades.org/medical-methodology.
PUBLIC HEALTH: Public Health Brigades works to empower communities to prevent common illnesses through in-home infrastructure development, health education, and community leader training. Each of the five projects – clean-burning stoves, cement floors, showers, water storage units and latrines – are designed to prevent many common and reoccurring illnesses that plague rural communities. This project is based off the work of other brigades, such as the micro-finance brigade which standardizes family contributions to community improvements. The families who receive these projects must pay 15-20% of the cost of the project, which can be achieved by working through the community bank micro-finance brigades have worked to set up.
Public health brigades at UConn are often combined with medical brigades. For more information, please visit www.globalbrigades.org/public-health-methodology.
Public health brigades at UConn are often combined with medical brigades. For more information, please visit www.globalbrigades.org/public-health-methodology.