In order to take action to help prevent malaria we have created a service learning
trip and course which are directly in line with our Cover Africa goals. We will
accomplish the following:
Educate students
Serve in Ghana, and conduct research in Ghana
Evaluate our intervention and research
1. Education: The class will be conducted as a seminar class, with guest lecturers each week. During the fall semester, the course will serve to provide the background we will need to put our work in Ghana in context. It will also help give us an introduction to Ghanaian culture so that we may have the greatest impact. Example topics that will be studied include traditional African medicine, the current international aid strategies in Ghana, data collection to eliminate bias and the native language: Twi.
2. Service and Research: The second part of the course will be a two and a half
week service trip to Humjibre, Ghana in December and January. Humjibre is a village
of 4,000 people located in the Western Region. The most common cause of malaria
in this area is falciparum malaria, which is also the most lethal. We will be
working in partnership with a local NGO called Ghana Health and Education Initiative
(GHEI).
During our trip we will be creating a malaria needs indicator survey (modeled
off of the needs indicator used by the World Health Organization) which we will
use each year to evaluate the presence of malaria and the progress of our intervention.
We will also be planning malaria education programs for the community, planning
a bed net treatment day and distributing bed nets.
3. Analysis and Evaluation: The third part of our class will take place in the spring. It will serve as an evaluation period in which we will analyze the results of our survey. We will also evaluate our own work and our preparation to see if we can make the project even more effective next year. Using the same survey each year will let us measure the progress of our intervention over time. If our data analysis shows effective intervention, it could be used as a model for other villages in the Western region.
