Donald A. Strauss Foundation Award Winners

STRAUSS FOUNDATION AWARDS EVELYN CASTLE
$10,000 PUBLIC SERVICE SCHOLARSHIP TO CARRY OUT
PROJECT IN HER SENIOR YEAR

The Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation, established as a memorial to the late Don Strauss of Newport Beach and now designed to award $10,000 scholarships to as many as 15 California college juniors annually, has announced that among the foundation’s new group of recipients is University of California, Santa Cruz student Evelyn Castle.

The Strauss scholarships fund public-service projects that the students have proposed and will carry out during their senior year. Castle, who hails from Orange County, will lead the group eHealth Nigeria, which supports the management of health facilities in Nigeria to influence health-related funding and policy decisions, and provide doctors with the patient information needed to improve decision-making before, during, and after care.

Don Strauss demonstrated a strong, life-long commitment to public service and education, reflected by his serving 10 years on the Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board, and 12 years on the Newport Beach City Council, including one as mayor.

He also founded summer internships in Washington, D.C., for students at Cornell University, Stanford University, the University of Rhode Island, the California Institute of Technology and Harvey Mudd College, and he endowed scholarships at Stanford, U.C. Irvine and Harvey Mudd. He died in 1995 at the age of 79.

Strauss’ widow, Dorothy M.R. Strauss, established the foundation in January of 1997 as a “tribute to the vision, ideals and leadership of Donald A. Strauss.” In its first year, the foundation board invited 10 universities to nominate up to three students each for Strauss scholarships, with the board making the final selection of the 10 winners. (Dorothy Strauss saw her vision for the Foundation realized–she phoned each of the 10 first-year winners to notify them personally– before she passed away in October of 1997 at the age of 83.)

In the second year the Foundation was able to broaden its reach and award 15 $10,000 scholarships, and now gives 13-15 each year. This new group represents the Foundation’s thirteenth year of awarding such scholarships, and like their counterparts in
the past, all of these recipients have extensive records of community and public service, as well as a demonstrated desire to “make a difference.”

International Health Interest Group Conference at UCSF

The 12th Annual Bay Area International Health Interest Group Conference, “Global Health: Translating Ideas into Action” took place on Sunday, March 7th at UC San Francisco, Parnassus campus. The conference included plenary speakers, breakout sessions, NGO exhibits, and poster presentations. There were over 40 poster submissions covering topics that range across health sciences disciplines and that span the globe. Posters have been grouped into four categories: Evaluation, Policy, Program Implementation, and Research. The complete packet of abstracts (PDF) is available for download.

eHealth Nigeria won 2nd place in the Project Implementation category, competing against students whom already had their PhD, MD, and MBA’s. eHealth Nigeria was the only group in any category representing the University of California, Santa Cruz and was one of the only featuring an undergraduate. The poster covered the “Instant EMR”, power issues, training and capacity building, and our mobile phone aspect.

Download the full Poster Here

Abstract:
In Northern Nigeria, a deteriorating health system has resulted in one of the World’s highest rates of maternal and infant deaths. This dire situation is amplified by the lack of an effective health information system, leaving hospitals and clinics to make decisions about patient care with only uninformed guesses about medical history and access to unreliable patient registers and reports.

In 2009, GIIP implemented an electronic medical records system using OpenMRS for the Shehu Idris College of Health Science and Technology (SICHST) in Kaduna, Nigeria. The three-month process resulted in electronic forms for all clinical areas, greatly reduced data duplication and a monthly reporting process that takes only seconds. This system provides not only access to the first patient-based health indicators in Nigeria but is also an example of the potential to overcome the harsh computing environment in Nigeria to implement eHealth systems that will improve the quality of care for at-risk women and children.

To continue improving the health outcomes of women and children through the use of effective health information systems, the current goals are:

* To expand the project scope to reach more patients by installing additional systems in high maternal mortality areas.
* To increase usability of the systems with touch screens, patient id cards, and mobile OpenMRS devices for community health workers.
* To create reference systems and eHealth Express ‘Kits’ for the easy deployment of maternal, child and reproductive health information systems.
* To develop training and curriculum for the SICHST as well as staff at supporting NGOs and clinics.

Testing and proving the feasibility of an integrated eHealth system utilizing mobile devices is a vital next step to increasing access to health care services, reducing unnecessary mortality and providing decision-making support to clinicians and public health professionals.

SC Sentinel Story: Santa Cruz duo aims to make a difference in Nigeria

By Jennifer Welsh
Posted: 01/17/2010 01:30:39 AM PST – http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_14210234

Complications kill or maim up to 30 percent of pregnant women in Nigeria, one of the highest rates in the world.

That statistic is what drew Evelyn Castle and Adam Thompson to Nigeria last summer, working with UC Santa Cruz’s Global Information Internship Program to improve maternal and child health in the West African nation.

“All of their medical records are paper, which can easily get ruined or lost,” Castle said. “The information was there, they just often aren’t able to access it.”

The team spent three months at the Shehu Idris School for Health Sciences and Technology’s clinic in Kaduna. They designed a digital record keeping system for the clinic’s reproductive and children’s health teams, then taught the employees to enter and find patient records.

“These aren’t people looking for handouts and charity. They want to work and take ownership of the project,” Thompson said. “It makes the work really rewarding.”

The team is in discussions with Pathfinder International, a global nongovernmental organization working to improve maternal care in Nigeria, to set up the record-keeping software in more clinics. Thompson hopes to return soon to set up the partnership.

If successfully implemented, “the records will not only inform what doctors do on a clinical level, how they treat a patient, but also on a policy level,” he said.

Castle, a junior health sciences major, hopes the partnership allows her to continue her work in Nigeria this summer. After graduation, she hopes to go to medical school. This trip was her first out of the country.

“My dad was about to disown me, and I had concerns,” she said. “But as soon as I got there, all of those concerns went away. All of the people were very welcoming.”

Thompson has been active in the program since 2003 and became the associate director for programs and instruction after graduating from UCSC in 2005. He has been on several trips for the program, but has a soft spot in his heart for Nigeria, saying that “it runs at a different pace.”

“They’ve just taken off with [the program],” said program founder, director and UCSC professor Paul Lubeck. “They are exemplary Santa Cruz activists.”

For information, visit http://giip.org.

UCSC Press Release: "Students forging a new frontier in global health"

On December 16, 2009 Roger Sideman wrote the following piece about our eHealth Nigeria project and GIIP.

Students forging a new frontier in global health

Health sciences major Evelyn Castle (’12) on her last day at the health clinic in Kaduna, Nigeria. The clinic’s new records room includes two computers.

Castle looking at a textbook with midwife students at the Kaduna clinic where she introduced Nigeria’s electronic medical records system.

Growing up, Evelyn Castle rarely journeyed beyond California’s borders. Foreign travel was a completely foreign concept.

So the Orange County native and second-year health sciences major at UC Santa Cruz didn’t waste any time on her first trip abroad. During a three-month-long project last summer at a health clinic in Nigeria–part of the UCSC Global Information Internship Program (GIIP)–Castle was instrumental in creating Nigeria’s first electronic medical records system.

Strictly speaking, the effort was part of a field study program, but it resembled more the work of a graduate student, or an international NGO, Castle’s advisors say.

That’s because the pilot project, with financial backing from heavyweights such as the Packard and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, has the potential to be replicated throughout sub-Saharan Africa–and, Castle hopes, it could ultimately revolutionize the way health information is managed, helping millions of women and children with very little extra required in terms of time, resources, and money.

Castle spent her first month hanging around the clinic in Kaduna, seeing how it was run and gaining people’s trust. After that, she hunted down several small, low-cost computers and spent her afternoons converting paper forms into computerized ones using the HTML design skills she learned in class at UCSC.

She taught data entry to the clinic staff, and was rewarded daily with large home-cooked meals and chauffeured rides back home in an ambulance to the Nigerian family she stayed with.

With computerized record keeping, medical histories are clearer and more reliable. Now, for example, if a sonogram shows that the position of a fetus puts the mother at risk during birth, there’s no chance that the information will be lost or illegible when she goes into labor.

Also with electronic records, the process of sending monthly reports to the government is cut from weeks to seconds. Before, filing monthly reports meant sifting through thousands of paper records to tally simple data required by the Ministry of Health.

“It was surprising to see that there was this need that we could fix with pretty simple technology,” said Castle, 21. “It just took a lot of improvisation.”

Campus gains in global health
The project is one example of a larger campus commitment to global health. Although dreams of establishing a school of public health have been put aside for now because of budget cuts, novel initiatives are taking hold: a new departmental home for health sciences, faculty collaboration with the brand new UC-wide Global Health Institute, innovative research investigating Mexico-California migrant health, and fresh resources for interdisciplinary work.

The students themselves initiate many of the most promising endeavors in the field of global health. GIIP, the program that sent Castle to Nigeria, for instance, is expanding its reach in Africa. The program lies at the intersection between student idealism and global activism.

As a longtime Nigeria expert who founded GIIP and the Center for Global, International and Regional Studies at UCSC, professor Paul Lubeck supports students’ hunch that they can have an impact even before getting their college diplomas.

“We’re building on an activist tradition at UCSC where undergrads like Evelyn behave like grad students; they are responsible, well-trained, and highly motivated,” said Lubeck.

At UCSC, courses and programs have sprung up to provide the academic scaffolding to support students’ bold ideas. One of these, the Global Information and Social Enterprise Studies major and minor in the sociology department, graduated its first seniors last June.

Students in this program undertake three core courses. The first covers practical skills such as Web design, coupled with theories about how technology and social justice work together.

“A lot of people are excluded from society because they don’t have access to information with which to make better choices,” explained Adam Thompson, a computer specialist, UCSC graduate (information systems management, ’05) and program coordinator at GIIP, who worked closely with Castle to develop the medical records system.

The second course teaches grant writing, and the third consists of the field study.

The result is that students are importing entrepreneurship and optimism to a continent seriously lacking both, Lubeck said.

Applied learning feeds the classroom
Ideally, applied learning through service or entrepreneurship can feed back into the classroom. That’s exactly what is happening with the medical records project. A new sociology department course designed by a handful of students will focus on global health in Africa, and will be based largely on the work Castle did there.

“We’ve probably sent eight students to Africa so far–we have great depth now,” said Lubeck. “People know us, have seen what we do. We plan to build on that trust and past success that Evelyn has been able to mobilize.”

GIIP has also sent students to India, Central America, and Indonesia; about two-thirds of the internships are domestic.

Global health is an increasingly popular focus for students in the UC system in fields ranging from public health and medicine to engineering and environmental sciences. Student enrollment in global health education programs has doubled nationwide in the past three years alone.