Andrew Craig
JD Candidate, College of Law
Defense for Children International — Palestine Section
Ramallah, Occupied Palestinian Territory (Israel)

In June, I arrived in Ramallah, Occupied Palestinian Territories to begin an internship with Defence for Children International – Palestine Section. DCI-Palestine is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-partisan children’s rights organization. It is one of 45 national chapters with an International Secretariat in Geneva and consultative status with various UN bodies and the Council of Europe. The majority of our work is done by Palestinian lawyers representing children in the Israeli Military and Palestinian justice systems. I work in DCI-Palestine’s advocacy unit documenting human rights and humanitarian law violations perpetrated against children for submission to the UN and the education of as many people as possible.

In my work I dealt primarily with the Geneva Conventions and International Human Rights Law, but also Israeli law.

Read Drew's full report.

Neha Dhungana
MD Candidate, Carver College of Medicine
Kanti Children’s Hospital
Maharajgunj, Nepal

This summer, I worked at Kanti Children’s Hospital in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal is a country with high infant mortality and under-five mortality rate. The main goal of my summer project was to go to Nepal and try to find out more about the social determinants of healthcare that resulted in poor healthcare for the children. After working in Nepal for two months, I came to the conclusion that poverty and lack of education are among the two main causes of the poor healthcare of the children of Nepal. 

People came to Kanti from all over Nepal and most of them were very poor. At Kanti, I saw a lot of patients with poor prognosis because their families were not able to keep up with their treatments.

Read Neha's full report.

Jeannette George
Undergraduate, College of Nursing and College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Social and Scientific Systems, Inc.
Kampala, Uganda

This summer (2012), I spent 12 weeks working as an intern for Mbarara regional Referral Hospital (MRRH), in Mbarara, Uganda. MRRH is the main health facility and also the teaching hospital for the Medical School of the Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST). It is the referral hospital for the entire western region of Uganda. It has a bed capacity of 240 beds. Its facilities include an Out-patient Department (OPD), In-patient Department (IPD) services, a pediatric unit that includes resuscitation equipment, and oxygen and various diagnostic laboratories. The pediatric unit admits over 8000 patients including some patients from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania.

As an intern at MRRH, I worked with a physician mentor to develop, design, and conduct a qualitative research study with the purpose to explore the knowledge, attitude, and beliefs about Sickle Cell Anemia (SCA) among parents and relatives of children with the disease.

Read Jeannette's full report.               

Ethan Gingerich

Undergraduate, College of Engineering (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Bridges to Prosperity
Jucuapa Occidental, Nicaragua

The Millennium Development Goals were created to encourage the world to strive for the promotion of basic human rights for all. These goals include increasing access to education and healthcare, reducing suffering from hunger and poverty, and empowering women. The non-profit organization Bridges to Prosperity works to promote all of these human rights through the construction of footbridges in impoverished countries.

In many of these impoverished countries, every rainy season brings with it the swelling of rivers to impassable levels for weeks or months at a time. Children miss so much class they are forced to drop out before graduating from primary school. Without access to medical facilities, it is not uncommon for people to die of treatable diseases such as diarrhea. It becomes a challenge to keep food on the table when families can’t reach the markets. Women, who are most often employed in nearby cities, can’t make it to work. Building a footbridge across the river grants access to all of these basic human rights, even during the rainy season.

Read Ethan's full report.

Hunter Harig

MPH Candidate, College of Public Health
Latino Commission on AIDS
New York City, New York

Like many other individuals in public health, I have many interests in many different topics.  Among my interests is sexual health, in particular in the Latino population.  When an opportunity arose to do an internship with the Latino Commission on AIDS (the Commission), I could not turn it down.  The Commission works to fulfill the health rights of individuals (most frequently Latinos) through directly supplying HIV/AIDS services to individuals, raising awareness about the challenges those individuals with HIV/AIDS face, and increasing the capacity of the health system to working diverse populations.  During my time at the Commission, I was able to work with the Capacity Building and Assistance (CBA) Division which receives requests from outside organizations for assistance in things such as trainings and community assessments. While working with CBA, there were two primary projects that I worked on: a community assessment related to HIV/AIDS in the Haitian community of Miami-Dade County and the creation of a training curriculum for health care providers working with Latinos with HIV/AIDS.

Read Hunter's full report.     

Adrianna Jarosz
Undergraduate, College of Engineering (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Bridges to Prosperity
Jucuapa Occidental, Nicaragua

Adrianna is an undergraduate Civil and Environmental Engineering student at the University of Iowa. Adrianna interned with Bridges to Prosperity (B2P), an NGO whose goal is to provide previously isolated communities with access to healthcare, educational, and economic opportunities by constructing footbridges that serve to greater connect these communities to their surroundings. Adrianna’s role for B2P’s summer project was to oversee the geotechnical components of the bridge, as well as to act as a supervisor for the construction schedule. She ensured that the bridge was built on suitable terrain, so that the bridge will be able to function during the region’s rainy season to allow the community to remain connected to schools and healthcare facilities. “Those of us that live in Iowa City recognize the importance of bridges. The Iowa River segregates our town into an east and a west side. Without bridge infrastructure connecting the two parts of this town together, our access would be significantly limited…There are many underdeveloped places in the world that experience this kind of frustration on a daily basis.”

Gregory Pelc
MD/MPH Candidate, Carver College of Medicine
Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement; Pallium India             
Karnataka, India; Kerala, India                                     

I spent three months, the entirety of the summer following M1 year, with physicians at two different NGOs in southern India.  My personal goals for the summer were to learn about the delivery of healthcare in rural or low resource settings, to participate in providing healthcare under the guidance of physicians, and to immerse myself in a culture far different from Iowa. As a believer in health as a human right, my purpose was to support and work within the healthcare infrastructure, looking specifically at the mobile healthcare outreach provided to patients in their homes and communities. Both organizations were excellent hosts, and provided a fascinating perspective on the obstacles faced in India. The Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM) sought to support the development and livelihood of tribal populations, a historically ostracized and disenfranchised collection of villages in rural Karnataka….. Pallium India (PI) is located in Kerala, India’s most developed and equitable state. PI focuses on palliative care, a type of medicine that addresses irrevocable life-altering diagnoses.

Read Greg's full report.