Anna H.

Chacon March 27, 2008 PROJECT PROPOSAL Guatemala Tentative time frame: 7-10 days during winter break 2008; summer 2009 Contacts Nuria Maria Chavez, M.D. Specialty: Infectious Diseases E-mail: nuria_chavez@hotmail.com Phone: 5203-1523 without country code Mr. Hector & Conchita Cruz Owner of Lensen (and various) schools in Guatemala City E-mail: conchitamom2003@yahoo.com Phone: 305-663-9102 ext. 4 (home); 786-229-3106 (cell); 305-888-8881 ext.1410 (work) Sra. Judith Torres Lammens Pharmacist; owner of Lamfer Laboratorios E-mail: jlammens@lamfer.com.gt Phone: Dr. & Mrs. Celia Chacon (my parents) E-mail: Arceniomd@aol.com; yomami2u@aol.com Phone: 305-661-0414; 305-297-1618; 305-310-8495 Purpose This project is intended to be an educational, service, and bonding experience for PLME students. Many opportunities abroad are often too expensive, unsafe, far, or too length for students to participate. My family has many contacts in Latin America as well as a house in a gated community within Guatemala just outside of the capital, where students can stay. One of my cousins, Dr. Chavez, is a specialist in infectious diseases and has offered herself to do rotations with students and talk to them about diseases and health conditions that are prevalent in third world countries, which are completely different from what's normally seen in first-world countries like the US. Mr. & Mrs. Cruz (parents of Conchita Cruz, Brown '07) are my neighbors in Miami and they own various schools in Guatemala. One of the biggest problems with Latin American countries concerns fertility and reproduction there is a big cultural taboo regarding sexual education, contraceptives, and women's rights to abortion. Within the small period of time that we are there it would be worthwhile to give a sort of mini-sex ed course to these kids, especially the ones in the pre-pubescent stage. It is my intention to eventually run some sort of after-school program that would bridge these upper-middle class kids with their less-advantaged peers within the small rural native villages. The inequality and class difference is so prominent in Central America that many people never leave their communities both the upper and lower classes grow in separate worlds, which grow more distant every day. Through my mom's high school classmate,

Anna H. Chacon March 27, 2008 Judith Torres, the students will be able to see a real pharmaceutical lab at work with the latest medical technologies and chemical compounds derived from Central America's vast resources. As a third-world country with lots of investment, outsourcing, and abundant resources, Guatemala is a top investment destination for biotech and pharmaceutical industries. Its rich soil has lots of molecules with significant biological activity and potential for further development. Notes The chance to see advanced AIDS disease there is a specific service for AIDS patients only Many cases of tuberculosis Clinic of infectious diseases lots of visible pathologies/manifestations Clinical rotations in hospitals (i.e. Roosevelt one of two public hospitals in the capital); internal medicine rotation Leave the capital and see a hospital/clinic in one of the small villages for a different experience Can arrange rotations in medicine for adults, children, childbirth/labor pretty easy to schedule fixed rotations for set dates There are many foreign students who come to Guatemala to fulfill rotational requirements/electives; especially Spain and other Latin American countries that count these experiences as medical electives or part of med school requirements Through the University of San Carlos (public university, where my father graduated from medical school the most demanding med school curriculum but unfortunately the most bureaucratic and most difficult) or Francisco Marroquin (the most renown private university in the country) If Brown requires a responsible supervisor, it could be my cousin's boss the Head of the Infectious Diseases and academic advisor at Francisco Marroquin