A Great Talk with Dick and Vicente

I have been feeling very inspired and invigorated this week. One of the reasons, besides having Ann Ming here doing a rotation (and, therefore giving me the opportunity to share this incredible experience), is that a Dick came into town and is already acting like a great mentor and support for me.

Dick is a family physician from Colorado who has come to SLT several times over the last few years, working for a week or two at a time with PA students. He has also worked in Africa and Asia in a medical capacity. He has seen an incredible number of things but has a calm, understated manner that is very refreshing.

Dick has recently retired and is thinking of moving to Central America permanently to do humanitarian work. He has spent the last two weeks gathering more information about the health systems here, the ideas and passions of the local community health workers, and finding out if his presence here would be appreciated on a long-term basis.

This morning, Dick, Shom, Elena, Ann Ming, and I met with Vicente (health promoter and health promoter coordinator) to find out what ideas Vicente had about how Dick might be able to help support the health promoter program. Dick has some money that he would be interested in using to support their efforts but wants to do it in a very thoughtful, intentional way. After a few hours of great discussion, we decided that Dick should talk to Paul Wise who will be able to share a lot of insight given his long-term relationship with SLT and the HPs. We're envisioning that there might be a way for Paul and Dick to set up some form of institute from which the HPs could request funding directed at specific prevention efforts (nutrition, diabetes screening and surviellance, asthma control, fluoride treatments). Further, we discussed the issue of whether HPs should be paid and what the up-sides and down-sides would be of providing them a salary or other compensation. The creative juices were really flowing. I am continually impressed by Vicente's insight and deliberate approach.

Dick has also been sharing with Ann Ming and me much of his public health and tropical medicine wisdom in the form of powerpoint slides and discussions. Once again, I can't believe how much I am learning and how much more I realize I want to read and learn. I feel very fortunate to have crossed paths with Dick.