0. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFORMATION SESSION
MONTH DAY, YEAR
[ Throughout the notes section of this presentation is additional information pertaining to each slide. Each slide will only have brief bullet points (to prevent the viewer from being distracted by long paragraphs; the presenter should supplement each bullet point with the additional information provided here ]

1. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION - ABOUT GLOBAL BRIGADES
GLOBAL BRIGADES MISSION
To empower volunteers and under-resourced communities to resolve global health and economic disparities and inspire all involved to collaboratively work towards an equal world
Global Brigades is the world’s largest student-led global health and sustainable development organization. As a secular, international nonprofit organization, we mobilize student volunteers and professionals to empower communities in developing countries with programs that improve quality of life and environment, while respecting local culture. Students and professionals empower communities in Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua.
GLOBAL BRIGADES VISION
To improve equality of life by igniting the largest student-led social responsibility movement on the planet
GLOBAL BRIGADES VALUES
Empowerment
Holistic Approach
Sustainability
Scalability
Financial Transparency
Collaboration

2. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION - PROGRAMS
Global Brigades offers 8 programs, some in more countries than others.
To empower volunteers, Global Brigades offers
9 skill-based programs

3. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – WHERE WE WORK
Programs are offered in Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua
COUNTRIES SELECTED BASED ON:
Large need in rural areas
Strong community partnerships
Logistically feasible
Safe for volunteers
NEEDS THAT GLOBAL BRIGADES ADDRESSES:
Basic services
Healthcare
Economic
Global Brigades focuses on countries where family members survive on less than $2 per day and where medical and economic needs are severely neglected and resources for basic services are low (most health issues are related to lack of basic services – clean water and public health infrastructure).
Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua were selected based on their high need for services in their rural areas, strong on-the-ground partnerships for sustainability, accessibility to logistical needs (for transporting groups, providing lodging and food), and safety.
Through on-the-ground, full-time staff in Honduras, Panama, and Nicaragua, Global Brigades is able to work with communities to ensure sustainable work and perpetuate on-going services in-between brigades.
Medical Brigades Honduras has developed relationships with over 100 community partners. For every medical brigade club that is established, one more community is able to receive care. Medical Brigades clubs systematically travel to Central America so that each community receives a clinic every 3 to 4 months. This method has been very successful in improving a consistent health care access to communities for a healthier population. Public Health Brigades picks up where Medical Brigades leaves off in terms of establishing a consistent, sustainable healthcare presence in communities through the Community Health Workers program.
[ Additional Information: communities GB works in are systematically ranked by baseline household surveys administered by the Research and Evaluation Team. This allows GB to focus on specific communities with the greatest need. ]

4. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PROGRAMS AND COUNTRIES
Programs offered in each country
Panama
Business
Dental
Environmental
Human Rights
Medical
Microfinance
Public Health
Water
Nicaragua
Honduras
Engineering
Global Brigades holistic model of development incorporates the following programs in Honduras.
While Global Brigades offers the Public Health Brigades program in Nicaragua, the Public Health program there is a little different, so this presentation only focuses on our Public Health Brigades program in Honduras.

5. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PROGRAMS AND COUNTRIES
Programs offered in each country
Panama
Business
Dental
Environmental
Human Rights
Medical
Microfinance
Public Health
Water
Nicaragua
Engineering
Honduras

6. WHY HONDURAS?

7. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – RURAL HONDURAS STATISTICS
60% of the population lives below the national poverty line
29.2% of the population lives on less than $2 per day
8.7% of the country’s GDP is spent on healthcare
Physician density is about 0.37 physicians for every 1,000 people
32% lack access to basic sanitation
6% of infant deaths (<5 years of age) are due to diarrheal disease and 12% are due to acute respiratory infections
Average level of education is approximately 6th grade
HONDURAS
NICARAGUA
COSTA RICA
PANAMA
GUATEMALA
BELIZE
EL SALVADOR
As the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, Honduras’ people have very limited access to healthcare and basic resources. Many health issues are related to clean water access and public health infrastructure. Families also have limited access to any type of small loans.
[Statistics from World Bank, CIA Factbook, and World Health Organization. These statistics reflect the average community that Global Brigades serves in Honduras.]

8. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – RURAL HONDURAS STATISTICS
Sanitation infrastructure is considered “Improved” if it includes connection to a public sewer, connection to a septic system, pour-flush latrine, access to a pit latrine, or access to a ventilated improved pit latrine.
[Source: Health Indicator database. Regional Initiative of Health Indicator, Pan American Health Organization (PAHO),
2 of 5 people in rural Honduras lack access
to improved sanitation infrastructure

9. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – IMPACT OF PUBLIC HEALTH
HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE AFFECTS
Health
Sanitation and hygiene
Time and quality of life
IN-HOME HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE
Reduces time spent walking to water sources
Reduces the physical strain of carrying water from water sources
Reduces skin diseases
Reduces respiratory illness
Reduces gastrointestinal diseases
Improves sanitation

10. HOW DOES PUBLIC HEALTH
BRIGADES HELP?

11. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – WHAT IS PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES?
PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES IMPROVE COMMUNITY HEALTH THROUGH A FOURFOLD APPROACH
The construction of 5 public health infrastructure projects: eco-stoves, latrines, water storage units, showers and concrete floors
A student-taught education curriculum: addresses topics such as personal hygiene, healthy lifestyle, pollution and cleanliness
The organization of a Basic Sanitation Committee: ensures project sustainability, maximizes health impact and helps facilitate the construction of further projects
Preventative medicine initiatives: household health analyses and chronic patient care with Community Health Workers
Volunteers work side-by-side community members to improve heath in their homes through the construction of eco-stoves, latrines, water storage units, showers and concrete floors. These projects and the public health education topics taught to the communities by students help to decrease life-threatening diseases. In addition, volunteers work alongside community-led health committees, including the Basic Sanitation Committee and Community Health Workers, in order to establish a continuous medical presence and further preventative healthcare initiatives in communities.
1. The 5 public health infrastructure projects: Global Brigades recently incorporated the use of OpenMRS into its practices. During our Medical Brigades, volunteers store patient information to track community health trends. This information allows Public Health Brigades to plan new program implementation and track the impact of their projects on community health. These 5 projects were based on Medical Brigade patient records that showed high levels of respiratory illness, Chagas disease and other preventable ailments caused by poor in-home health infrastructure.
2. An education curriculum: empowers communities with knowledge to prevent the proliferation of life-threatening diseases

12. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PUBLIC HEALTH TEAM
PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES TEAM
Advises chapters on brigade preparation
Leads your brigade
Builds community relations
Works with community in preparation for brigade arrival
Trains community councils and committees
Performs continuous community follow-up and monitoring
Selects future communities to work with
Based on 3 aspects: need, access to loans and banks, and community commitment
Global Brigades supports a full-time staff in Honduras to prepare for and coordinate Brigades and to conduct follow-up and measure community impact. Each Brigade will have a coordinator and interpreters throughout their time in Honduras to ensure project success and to coordinate logistics. Additionally, Public Health staff make frequent follow-up visits to each project community to facilitate continued relationships between Global Brigades and our work communities.

13. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PROJECT SUSTAINABILITY
SUSTAINABILITY ASPECTS
BASIC SANITATION COMMITTEE
Monitor proper maintenance of Public Health Brigades in-home infrastructure projects
Provide follow-up assistance to all families within the project community
Reinforce the importance of health-related lifestyle changes
COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKERS
Perform in-home care for chronically ill patients
Advise relatives on how to care for their chronically ill family member
Take vitals of community members when necessary
Keep patient history records
Provide first aid care as needed
Basic sanitation committees are formed to begin the proliferation of proper education. Clean water and sanitation and hygiene education go hand in hand with health. This committees works with individual households as well as children in the community to teach about basic sanitation and hygiene.
In addition to providing patient care, Community Health Workers keep patient history records during their in-home visits for Public Health Brigades, which allows Global Brigades to further evaluate the impact of Public Health projects on community health.
The Basic Sanitation Committee and Community Health Workers together stand as a sustainable healthcare presence in their communities. With their training and knowledge, community members are able to provide follow-up care to patients and to reinforce the importance of preventative health measures. They are the advocates and leaders of their community’s wellbeing and flourishing.

14. HOW CAN YOU
HELP?

15. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PUBLIC HEALTH
FOR EVERY
PUBLIC HEALTH
VOLUNTEER,
1 WATER
STORAGE UNIT
CAN BE BUILT =

16. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PUBLIC HEALTH
FOR EVERY TWO
PUBLIC HEALTH
VOLUNTEERS,
1 FAMILY
CAN BENEFIT FROM
A LATRINE =

17. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PUBLIC HEALTH
AND FOR EVERY FIFTEEN PUBLIC HEALTH VOLUNTEERS,
TWO FAMILIES CAN RECEIVE COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

18. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – PUBLIC HEALTH
THE IMPORTANCE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE AND INTERACTION
Since Public Health Brigades occur in households, the impact of cultural exchange is particularly profound for public health projects
-Motivational factor
-Trust, openness, and collaboration
Public Health Brigades facilitate a symbiotic relationship
-Students empower communities
-Communities empower students
Taking time to speak with and learn from your families demonstrates a level of care, sensitivity, and compassion that surpasses merely working on the construction of projects and proves crucial for the long-term success of public health projects
The community benefits greatly from direct volunteer involvement. It’s important to communicate, learn from, and share with the families you’re working with.
Motivational factor: It is a huge motivational factor to see volunteers committed to a community’s access to needed public health infrastructure.
Trust and openness: when students come into community members’ homes, it’s important that students make the extra effort to bond with their families in order to establish a relationship that facilitates teamwork and a willingness to share and participate
Students empower communities: exposing communities to your worldviews and perspectives inspire them to think about their lives differently (and with renewed importance)
Communities empower communities: being able to teach students something about their lives is an empowering experience in itself and students can learn a lot from community members if they take the time to hear about their experiences and understand their lives

19. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – WHY WE WANT YOU
YOUR BENEFITS
Contribute to sustainable change
Apply your education
Further your education
- Spanish language immersion
- Public health needs and solutions
- International development experience
COMMUNITY BENEFITS
Empowerment
- Reinforces communities’ commitment to their health
New health and economic potential
-Investment for health infrastructure projects
The volunteer gains many benefits from direct volunteering. They are providing a community with not just public health infrastructure, but health and economic potential. The volunteer also gets to directly apply their education, weather it is public health, engineering, Spanish, international development or more. A volunteer also gets to experience a developing country and gains a better perspective on how the majority of the world lives
Apart from the direct volunteer involvement, each volunteer also indirectly supports, through their program contributions, sustainability aspects like training the Basic Sanitation Committee and Community Health Workers and allowing staff to check up with communities and confirm that the systems are being operated properly.

20. WHAT DOES A BRIGADE LOOK LIKE?
[ Throughout the notes section of this presentation is additional information pertaining to each slide. Each slide will only have brief bullet points (to prevent the viewer from being distracted by long paragraphs; the presenter should supplement each bullet point with the additional information provided here ]

21. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – 9-DAY ITINERARY

22. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – 7-DAY ITINERARY

23. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
COMMUNITY HEALTH WORKER HOUSE VISITS
Observe and assist CHW with in-home patient care for chronically ill individuals
Identify potential patient referral cases
Record and assess patient history records for the households you visit
Perform household health infrastructure evaluations and analyses
Make recommendations for how to improve the home health environment

24. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
ECO-STOVES
Build eco-stoves with chimneys for proper release of carbon elements from homes
Harmful pollutants that cause many respiratory illnesses are diverted
Eco-stoves burn more efficiently, limiting deforestation
Safer for children and pregnant mothers

25. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
CONCRETE
Chagas is a potentially fatal disease spread through insects that burrow into the ground and into adobe bricks
Children learn to crawl and walk in homes with bare feet, increasing parasitic infection
Concrete floors are a simple solution to these health challenge
In Latin America, specifically, ten million people are presently infected with Chagas disease, a potentially fatal disease spread through insects that burrow in the ground and in adobe bricks. In many rural communities, children learn to crawl and walk in homes with bare dirt floors, which increase the incidence of parasitic infection, which is often associated with diarrheal disease, and respiratory illness. Concrete floors are a simple solution to these health challenges.

26. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
LATRINES
Build latrines for sanitary and proper waste disposal
Latrines provide convenient and inexpensive solution near the home

27. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
WATER STORAGE UNITS
In collaboration with Water Brigades, provides constant access to clean, chlorinated water in the home
Water “pilas” allow for a secure and convenient storage place that also saves families hundreds of hours per year walking to water sources

28. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
SHOWERS
Most homes in communities do not have showers that provide a clean space to bathe
-Without a shower or pila, people are forced to use the river or other unclean sources of water to bathe themselves
The shower provides space for daily bathing
The pila, latrine, and shower will be incorporated into one joined “hygiene station”

29. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
HYGIENE STATION DESIGN
Proposed by members of the Public Health Brigade chapter at DePaul University, this design was piloted by the in-country staff in November 2011 in El Cantòn.
-It includes the newest infrastructure project, a shower
-The project was successful and well-received by the masons and community members and has been incorporated into all Public Health Brigades
Since its 2011 redesign, the hygiene station was revamped in December 2013 to lower construction cost
-L-shaped
-Uses fewer bricks

30. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
EDUCATION WORKSHOPS
ADULT AND FAMILY HEALTH EDUCATION
Focuses on the importance, care, and maintenance of the construction projects
Initiates the proper dialogue to share other critical health concepts such as treatment of potable drinking water and proper sanitation practices
KID’S HEALTH EDUCATION
Dynamic mix of simple yet highly effective songs, games and interactive activities
Teaches health promotion and disease prevention methods
Serves as a supplement to health education already taking place in the classroom

31. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – ONE WEEK BRIGADE
WATER DAY
WHY WATER?
Stops the cycle of chronic sickness caused by contaminated water
Necessary for public health infrastructure projects
To further experience and understand the holistic model
POSSIBLE ACTIVITIES
Constructing water system
-Digging trenches and laying pipe
Education workshop
New community assessment
Project follow-up
If households do not have a water system connection to their home, the public health projects cannot be done.

32. HOW DO I SIGN UP?

33. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – TOTAL CONTRIBUTION
HOW IS YOUR PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADE FUNDED?
Volunteers’ Program Contribution:
- $960 (Honduras)
- Brigade expenses
- Program sustainability
- Airfare: Variable
PROGRAM CONTRIBUTION DETAILS
9 day program (Honduras)
Accommodations & meals (vegetarian/vegan options available)
Clean drinking water
Airport pick-up and drop-off
In-country transportation
Spanish translators, coordinators, technicians, and security
Program sustainability and follow-up between brigades
Public Health Project Materials: $100
Volunteers will be lodged as a group at a GB compound. All accommodations are clean and safe. There is electricity, bathrooms and clean drinking water on site. Meals are prepared on site using clean water and food specifically for the brigade. A GB staff member will be with the volunteers at all times and available for 24 hour assistance.
For the complete breakdown visit - Remember to express that the program contribution contains $100 towards the public health projects.
[ Actual lodging facility will most likely not be determined until a week or two before a brigade, due to logistics of arranging volunteers and frequent changing volunteer numbers up to the actual brigade. ]

34. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – RESOURCES FOR YOU
FUNDRAISING TOOL
Send links of brigade project information to donors
Create personalized profile to share with your donors
Track donation progress on individual and group level
STUDENT RESOURCE SITE
Brigade planning materials
Collection of reports from past brigades
Community profiles
Frequently asked questions
IN-COUNTRY CHAPTER ADVISING TEAM
Team of trained staff in Nicaragua
Share best practices for all aspects of brigade preparation
Answer questions about brigade and community

35. Don’t know who your advisor is?
PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – CONTACT INFORMATION
Contact your chapter advisor for information about Public Health Brigades in Honduras
Don’t know who your advisor is?

36. PUBLIC HEALTH BRIGADES INFO SESSION – JOIN THE NEXT BRIGADE
NAME LAST NAME
President
Phone Number
[ Consider adding more information to this slide, such as due dates for the brigade application, deposit due dates, next meeting date/time/location. ]

37. QUESTIONS?
QUESTIONS?
Don’t Hesitate to Ask