Student International Activities

In 2006, two undergraduate nursing students (Casey Wagner and Sylvia Waweru) received financial support from the UAB Global Framework program. UASON faculty worked with the students to help them prepare proposals for Global Framework grants which were funded by the UAB Sparkman Center for Global Health and the NIH. Sylvia Waweru, a nursing honors student, spent 3 weeks in Nairobi, Kenya, collecting data for her honors’ research project comparing self-concept and emotional responses of children living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya and in Alabama.  While in Kenya, Ms. Waweru also had an opportunity to mentor with Dr Joyce Lavussa, the Family and Reproductive Health Officer, and other department heads at the WHO regional office in Nairobi[. She also participated in community outreach activities that are an initiative of the orphanage where she conducted her research. These activities included visiting and teaching HIV-positive families in the very low income housing areas of Nairobi and participating in Life’s Skills Seminars that catered to the same population. 

Casey Wagner, a nursing student who also studies Spanish, used her Global Framework funding for a 3-week immersion experience in Chile, which was coordinated by Ms. Maria Sylvia Campos, a faculty member at the Pontificia Universidad Católica (PUC) in Santiago. The UAB CC has collaborated for the past 3 years on a number of projects with PUC, including mutual research projects and a 1-month leadership development and English language program for 15 Chilean nursing faculty at UAB held in January 2006.  This history of collaboration paved the way for Ms. Wagner’s global health experience in Chile.  During her visit to Chile, Ms. Wagner and her Chilean nursing student mentor visited numerous hospital and community-based clinical facilities, including a visit with a traditional Mapuche healer who is on the staff of a public health clinic in Santiago.  Ms. Wagner also participated in a 1-week student-organized service learning project, Trabajos de Salud Rural, in Las Cabras and Llallauquén, Chile along with medical, pharmacy, psychology and nursing students from PUC.  The students developed health centers for adults and children out of a local classroom. They provided vision, dental, body mass, developmental, and blood pressure screenings, as well as facilitating consultations with doctors, supplying medicines and offering psychiatric counsel.