The Republic of Guatemala, a beautiful country inhabited since Pre-Columbian times, spans the width of Central America with coasts on the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea and borders with four countries: Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.  The 13 million Guatemalans descended from the Mayans and are a vibrant multicultural society with strong ties to their ethnic past.  Guatemala was explored by the Spanish in the early 1500s and, later, it was both a Spanish colony and part of New Spain (Mexico).  Following Independence in 1821, Guatemala was ruled by a series of military leaders and experienced several coups and tumultuous government transitions.  In 1996 Guatemala ended a multi-decade civil war and in the ensuing 15 years restored peace, improved civil governance, and strengthened the education and health sectors.  Today, it is a “middle income” country.

Despite significant progress, Guatemala’s social indicators lag countries with much lower per capita incomes; its indigenous population fares significantly worse on every index.  Average school attendance is less than six years, life expectancy is barely 70 years; and in 2004 infant and under five child mortality rates were among the highest in the Americas.  Nutrition remains problematic: almost one half of children under five years old are malnourished and a full 30 percent (30%) of pregnant women have nutritional deficits. HIV/AIDS is growing and there is little antiretroviral (ARV) coverage. Guatemala also suffers high incidence of tuberculosis and reports almost two thirds of all malaria cases in Central America.

Resource links: http://www.who.int/countries/gtm/en/

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September-December 2009
Danielle Dittrich
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Vanderbilt School of Nursing

Danielle Dittrich is currently a Registered Nurse, and, in August 2009 she graduated as a Women's Health Nurse Practitioner from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. As an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University's George Peabody College, she majored in Human and Organizational Development (Health and Human Services), and she participated in the accelerated bridge program, which combines undergraduate and graduate school into five years. As a student in Nashville, she worked at the Waverly Belmont United Neighborhood Health Service clinic where she sees mostly pregnant Latina patients. She also mentored in the Latina Birthing Project, through Metro Public Health Department. To this day, she remains passionate about improving the health of women in underserved communities, specifically Latina women.

In the fall 2009, she traveled to a rural village in the western highlands of Guatemala to set up a women's health program as a part of the Primeros Pasos pediatric clinic. While in Guatemala, she focused on prenatal care and cervical cancer screening. In the future, she hopes to continue to be a part of medical missions in developing countries, and she plans serve the Latina community in her specialty area of high-risk obstetrics. Eventually, she hopes to teach as a professor of nursing in community health.

12 October 2009 From Guatemala: Nurse in Pediatric Clinic

21 October 2009 From Guatemala: Nurse Launches Women's Clinic

17 November 2009 From Guatemala: Primeros Pasos Update

1 December 2009 Fertility Necklaces and Family Planning: Guatemala

17 December 2009 The Obstacles of Giving Birth in a Guatemalan Hospital

11 January 2009 Saying Goodbye to Primeros Pasos: Danielle Dittrich

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September-December 2010
Cody Bowers
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing

Cody Bowers will graduate from Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in August of 2010 with a Master's degree from the Family Nurse Practitioner program. As an undergraduate student at San Francisco State, Cody's interest in nursing was spurred while working as a mental health technician at a psychiatric hospital in Fremont California. The daily struggle for many of these patients was initially difficult to witness, but helped him recognize the need for a holistic approach to nursing and healthcare.

After a summer road trip to the Gulf Coast in 2006 to help restore hurricane ravaged region, Cody's love for nursing was confirmed. The destruction and destitution was a minor blemish on the American landscape, but the agony along the Gulf Coast was certainly resonating throughout third world countries on a daily basis. This idea has pushed Cody towards a career in global health nursing where he can help institute change and improvements for those in need of healthcare.

With an interest in tropical medicine and infectious disease, he hopes to work in a primary care clinic in Central or South America where he can expand his Spanish as well as his diagnostic skills. As dengue fever, malaria, cholera, dystentery, and Chagas ravage the impovershed population of our southern neighbors, further research and interventions are needed to reduce the consequences of these infections.

11 October 2010: Global Health Leader Cody Bowers Lands in Guatemala

27 October 2010: Obstacles to Treatments in the Presence of Severe Medical Conditions

10 November 2010: The Prevalence of Toxicology

23 November 2010: Trying to be innovative with diarrhea

15 December 2010: When Medicine Misses

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September-December 2010
Lauren Eppinger
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing

Lauren Eppinger graduated in August, 2010 from the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner program at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. During the Fall of 2010, she will spend time at the Primeros Pasos clinic in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Passionate about making the world a better place through healing and the sharing of knowledge, she integrates teaching into every healthcare encounter.

Before pursuing a path in nursing, Lauren studied art and psychology at Bennington College, in Vermont. She believes that this interdisciplinary perspective has helped her shape a deeper understanding of the world, and a desire to be a global citizen. She hopes to be able to weave her experience and her education into successful work with the clinic in Guatemala, and elsewhere in the future.

Lauren lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2011, she hopes to start working in pediatric primary care, focusing on family-based preventative healthcare. She is looking forward to bringing home some new perspective from Guatemala.

4 October 2010: Global Health Leader Lauren Eppinger Arrives in Guatemala 

18 October 2010: Health School Program at Primeros Pasos

2 November 2010: Diagnosing and Treating Malnutrition in Xela, Guatemala

16 November 2010: An appeal for hope: the battle with apathy

2 December 2010: Helping Any Way We Can

15 December 2010: Wrapping Up the Malnutrition Project

26 December 2010: Finishing up in Xela and Returning to the United States

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December-January 2010
Liz Lightner
Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala
Vanderbilt University, Department of Emergency Medicine

Liz Lightner is a resident in Emergency Medicine at Vanderbilt University. She relocated to Nashville from Phoenix, Arizona after graduating from the University of Arizona, College of Medicine in 2008. During her first year of medical school, she spent a month assisting in a community medical clinic in Huancayo, Peru. Although this experience provided an opportunity to learn about medical practice and culture in less resource rich areas of the world, she was eager to gain the medical knowledge and procedural skills that would allow her to better assist patients in this setting. As part of her residency program, she had the opportunity to spend a month practicing Emergency Medicine abroad. She chose to work in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala in order to improve upon her medical Spanish, learn more about medicine in developing areas of the world, and to provide care to the patients of this area.

1 January 2010: Getting Settled at Hospitalito in Santiago Atitlan, Guatemala