Eleven Volunteer Service Awards were granted this spring; these awardees will be spending between 8 weeks to more than a year volunteering. This and following blogs profile these individuals.
Sarah Hartman is beginning her 2nd year as a volunteer with Partners In Health in Chiapas, Mexico. Compañeros En Salud (CES) in Mexico is a sister organization of Partners In Health, a global health organization working towards health as a human right in twelve countries. In Chiapas, CES runs 10 remote rural clinics and one hospital in the Sierra Madre region of the state. To care for patients with depression, CES provides psychosocial support and medications in the clinic, in-home visits where community health workers employ psychoeducation tools to educate patients and their families, and a support group to provide patients with tools to confront depression. Sarah’s main work currently consists of evaluating this group in order to understand which components are working and which need to be improved. Every week she travels to a different community to interview patients, observe support groups, and shadow community health workers.