CHHS Students to Travel to India, Cuba, and Malawi with Education Abroad Program
Three groups of CHHS students will depart on faculty-led excursions this week, traveling to different corners of the globe over their spring break as part of UNCC’s Education Abroad Program.
The trips, which are components of on-campus spring term courses, will take students to Cuba, Malawi, and India in search of global perspectives applicable to their academic and professional development back home.
Students will explore a broad range of public health, social work, and nursing-related issues while in country, working closely with and learning from the local people.
Social work professor Diana Rowan leads the Malawi program. She explained that many students come into the process expect the Malawian people and their challenges to be very different from they see here in Charlotte.
“However, despite Malawi being the ninth poorest country in the world, the students typically comment that the issues are the same as they see in their clients at home — lack of resources, health challenges, barriers to social services, and stigma,” she said.
Nursing professor Maren Coffman said students who travel to Cuba also commonly find their expectations defied.
“Students are always surprised to learn that despite the decades long embargo, the limited resources, and the economic challenges that the people endure, Cuba reports better health outcomes than the US, she said.” “They have a longer life expectancy and a better infant mortality rate than many developed countries including us! They do this by having an impressive health care workforce that promotes healthy lifestyles, and delivers free, community-based health care to all Cuban citizens.”
Dr. Coffman’s group is invited to spend time at a Cuban hospital this year, in what will be a rare look into the inner workings of the local healthcare system for outsiders, who are usually not permitted such access.
The group traveling to Malawi will work with NGOs in rural areas of the country, and help a human rights agency conduct a presentation on HIV prevention.
Dr. Rowan said for students willing to set aside prejudgments and interact with the Malawian villagers on their terms, the trip can be an enlightening experience.
“They gain access to a very intimate, personal opportunity to form relationships with people who live lives that look very different on the outside, but whose hearts are focused on the same issues as we have here — caring for loved ones, bouncing back from adversity, and hope for better, healthier lives for their children.”
CHHS has offered the Malawi course for the last four years, and each time there has been a waiting list of students interested in participating.
Also popular, the India program is led by Dr. Shanti Kulkarni of the School of Social Work and Dr. Beth Racine of the Department of Public Health Sciences. Its focus is health, empowerment, and gender equity, and it will pair participants with faculty and staff from a well-respected public university in Delhi. Students will have the chance to visit and observe the work of NGOs attempting to empower vulnerable people in two different regions of the country.
The Office of Education Abroad offers many opportunities to study outside the United States, and will host a Study Abroad Fair to discuss several of them later this March.