Dr. Ashley Karlin: Upcoming USC Spring Break Class Trip to Haiti
This March, a team of students from the University of Southern California will join us in Haiti for their spring break. Their goal is to complete a public health project for a portion of our community and to learn from our families and partners. Below is the first blog post from Professor Ashley Karlin documenting their journey. Dr. Karlin visited our work two years ago to get this project off the ground. Check out her original post to see photos from her trip.
This Spring, 2018, I will lead a global health writing course in Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- eleven wonderful University of Southern California pre-health students will accompany me to write their way through medical shadowing, community engagement, qualitative research, and service-learning opportunities from March 10-18, 2018. Many of you know that this is a project near and dear to my heart which I've been developing for many years, and which I hope will continue to grow deeper and stronger in the future -- we cannot wait to get to Haiti.
I'll be partnering with Work (formerly known as Team Tassy), a Pittsburgh-LA-Port-au-Prince based nonprofit that seeks to eliminate the causes of global poverty, specifically in the community of Menelas in Port-au-Prince.
Menelas skirts the only landfill in Haiti and we'll be working with residents to draft community health protocol and consider a future of U.S-Haiti relationships that is of greatest benefit to Haitians and that supports Haiti's autonomy and economic vitality. Specifically, we'll conduct qualitative research for Work that assists with their First Mile initiative, which seeks to improve the health of children living in and near the landfill and ultimately to end child labor in the "first mile" of supply chains.
The students and I will be sharing our writing, which will cover everything from first-impressions, to fresh insights on global health, to active critique of our own work and short-term pre-health programs more broadly.
More to come as we move towards March! Pou Ayiti!
Find out more about the course: https://dornsife.usc.edu/writ-499/