Grassroots Health Initiative

We don’t even have a small little clinic here. That means if we have a problem, we need to go down the mountain. If this disease were going to kill us, it would kill us by then.
– Women’s Focus Group, Pò Fransè region in Balan, Haiti. August 2008

RESPE: Balan selected Pò Fransè, an isolated mountain community of about 300 households, as the pilot site for the Grassroots Health Initiative (GHI). Pò Fransè is a two-hour walk down a steep mountainside to the clinic. It has an unused dispensary and is home to three aging midwives, who have never been retrained. RESPE: Ayiti has conducted four focus groups here.

RESPE: Balan and RESPE: Boston came up with the GHI as a means of addressing Balan’s pressing health needs. Recruiting and curricula will start in May 2010 and implementation will begin August 2010. By the end of August, Pò Fransè will have twelve trained community health workers and two midwives working, one community health event, and a medical records system. A standardized health emergency response system will connect this isolated region to the clinic, and the trainees will have the knowledge to conduct future training sessions.

Health is a human right and without it, one cannot support oneself, family, or community. The GHI offers the people of Pò Fransè more confidence, knowledge, and ownership of their health.

"During the summer of 2008 I had the pleasure of traveling with and interdisciplinary team of Tufts undergraduate students to Haiti, to conduct a community engaged health assessment. This work built on exiting relationships that the students had developed with community leaders in Haiti and Haitian Diaspora leaders in Somerville. Project protocols were developed in conjunction with Diaspora leaders prior to our departure, and once on the ground in Haiti implemented in collaboration with community members. Over the course of 3 weeks we were able to conduct 15 focus groups, and well as multiple key informant interviews and 2 social mapping sessions. Data were shared with community members during a community-wide forum and plans were made to further the partnership. The trip was successful from both a research and a pedagogical perspective. Students learned research methods, and community engaged approaches to research while implementing an actual community health assessment. I was so impressed by the students’ level of engagement that I offered an independent study on qualitative data analysis and codebook formation in the fall to allow students to further examine the findings. This summer I plan to submit a process paper describing this project as it lends itself to student learning, as well as a paper that has been co-authored by three students involved with the independent study."
- Linda Martinez, Tufts Professor in the Community Health Dept.