Class Overview
In order to take action to help prevent malaria we have created a service learning trip and course which are directly in line with our Cover Africa goals. We will accomplish the following:
Education
The class will be conducted as a seminar class, with guest lecturers each week. The course coordinator is Professor Laura Harrington who is involved with research about the biology, ecology and behavior of mosquitoes that transmit human disease. She is also the professor of global health related classes such as medical entomology and plagues and people. During the fall semester, the course will serve to provide the background we will need to put our work in Ghana in context. It will also help give us an introduction to Ghanaian culture so that we may have the greatest impact. Example topics that will be studied include traditional African medicine, the current international aid strategies in Ghana, data collection to eliminate bias and the native language: Twi.
Service and Research
The second part of the course will be a two and a half week service trip to Humjibre, Ghana in December and January. Humjibre is a village of 4,000 people located in the Western Region. The most common cause of malaria in this area is falciparum malaria, which is also the most lethal. We will be working in partnership with a local NGO called Ghana Health and Education Initiative (GHEI). This organization has been in Humjibre for four years and has been hosting volunteers each summer. GHEI has built a volunteer house in the community where we will be staying (which has locking doors and mosquitoes bed nets). They will provide clean drinking water, imported from the city, and safe food. Having worked in Humjibre previously we have witnessed incredible work that GHEI has done, including building a community center, a library, a computer center, creating an English Language program, a health peer educator program, providing scholarships to promising students and many other outreach programs. They have worked on malaria in the village through distribution of nets, malaria education, and holding annual malaria days, but they need support to increase programming and net distribution. This support we will provide through our partnership. If you would like more information about GHEI you can go to www.GHEI.org.
During our trip we will be creating a malaria needs indicator survey (modeled off of the needs indicator used by the World Health Organization) which we will use each year to evaluate the presence of malaria and the progress of our intervention. We will take a random sample of six areas in the village and visit a total of 360 households to gain information about living conditions, prevention mechanisms currently in use, incidence of malaria and other poverty measures.
We will also be planning malaria education programs for the community, planning a bed net treatment day (to soak the nets in Permethrin which kills mosquitoes on contact, greatly increasing the efficiency of the prevention), and distributing bed nets. Our goal is to distribute at least 500 bed nets, and to retreat at least 200 bed nets.
We will be living in the village, along side the people of Humjibre, eating traditional Ghanaian food and getting to know the local Ghanaian culture. We will also have cultural opportunities such as drumming lessons, hair braiding, fabric making and Twi lessons.
Analysis and Evaluation
The third part of our class will take place in the spring. It will serve as an evaluation period in which we will analyze the results of our survey. We will also evaluate our own work and our preparation to see if we can make the project even more effective next year. Using the same survey each year will let us measure the progress of our intervention over time. If our data analysis shows effective intervention, it could be used as a model for other villages in the Western region. I hope that you share our excitement in the launch of this service learning course and trip that was created in true Cornell spirit.
- Educate students
- Serve in Ghana, and conduct research in Ghana
- Evaluate our intervention and research
Education
The class will be conducted as a seminar class, with guest lecturers each week. The course coordinator is Professor Laura Harrington who is involved with research about the biology, ecology and behavior of mosquitoes that transmit human disease. She is also the professor of global health related classes such as medical entomology and plagues and people. During the fall semester, the course will serve to provide the background we will need to put our work in Ghana in context. It will also help give us an introduction to Ghanaian culture so that we may have the greatest impact. Example topics that will be studied include traditional African medicine, the current international aid strategies in Ghana, data collection to eliminate bias and the native language: Twi.
Service and Research
The second part of the course will be a two and a half week service trip to Humjibre, Ghana in December and January. Humjibre is a village of 4,000 people located in the Western Region. The most common cause of malaria in this area is falciparum malaria, which is also the most lethal. We will be working in partnership with a local NGO called Ghana Health and Education Initiative (GHEI). This organization has been in Humjibre for four years and has been hosting volunteers each summer. GHEI has built a volunteer house in the community where we will be staying (which has locking doors and mosquitoes bed nets). They will provide clean drinking water, imported from the city, and safe food. Having worked in Humjibre previously we have witnessed incredible work that GHEI has done, including building a community center, a library, a computer center, creating an English Language program, a health peer educator program, providing scholarships to promising students and many other outreach programs. They have worked on malaria in the village through distribution of nets, malaria education, and holding annual malaria days, but they need support to increase programming and net distribution. This support we will provide through our partnership. If you would like more information about GHEI you can go to www.GHEI.org.
During our trip we will be creating a malaria needs indicator survey (modeled off of the needs indicator used by the World Health Organization) which we will use each year to evaluate the presence of malaria and the progress of our intervention. We will take a random sample of six areas in the village and visit a total of 360 households to gain information about living conditions, prevention mechanisms currently in use, incidence of malaria and other poverty measures.
We will also be planning malaria education programs for the community, planning a bed net treatment day (to soak the nets in Permethrin which kills mosquitoes on contact, greatly increasing the efficiency of the prevention), and distributing bed nets. Our goal is to distribute at least 500 bed nets, and to retreat at least 200 bed nets.
We will be living in the village, along side the people of Humjibre, eating traditional Ghanaian food and getting to know the local Ghanaian culture. We will also have cultural opportunities such as drumming lessons, hair braiding, fabric making and Twi lessons.
Analysis and Evaluation
The third part of our class will take place in the spring. It will serve as an evaluation period in which we will analyze the results of our survey. We will also evaluate our own work and our preparation to see if we can make the project even more effective next year. Using the same survey each year will let us measure the progress of our intervention over time. If our data analysis shows effective intervention, it could be used as a model for other villages in the Western region. I hope that you share our excitement in the launch of this service learning course and trip that was created in true Cornell spirit.