Our Partner & Project
GlobeMed at Northwestern has funded the design and construction of the HOPE Center, a village-level health center that works with the Ghana Health Services to deliver needed public health services to the eight rural communities that otherwise lack access to health care. Currently, GlobeMed at NU is working to address malnutrition through a community-based nutrition and education program. Also, students have began working with BEHIV (Better Existence with HIV), a comprehensive AIDS service organization in the Chicago area. BEHIV provides management, housing, prevention, testing, mental health counseling, massage therapy and art therapy to the Chicago community.
Location
Ho, Ghana (map), Evanston and Chicago, Illinois (map)
Key facts
45% of children ages 6 months to 5 years are malnourished in the Ho, District, where the HOPE Center is located, according to the Ghana Health Services.
There are a total of 27,548 known people living HIV/AIDS in the Chicago area. A disproportionate amount of these cases, almost 70% occur in people of color and 45% of cases are in homosexuals.
Our Partners
The H.O.P.E. Center currently serves 6,000 people in eight villages with child welfare clinics, childhood immunizations, maternal health classes, insecticide-treated bed net distribution, and family planning services. The Center is locally staffed by nurses from the Ghana Health Services (GHS) and they plan on expanding to offer clinical services through licensed physicians in the near future. The Center has only recently opened in the past year and has spent the first several months establishing relationships with the community and performing further needs assessments in order to scale programs and services in the coming years.
BEHIV's mission is to improve the lives of people with HIV and AIDS through a comprehensive range of quality public services. BEHIV works to:
- educate more than 12,000 students about how to protect themselves from the virus.
- house more than 190 men, women and children impacted by HIV
- deliver case management, mental health counseling, art therapy and massage therapy services to more than 300 adults
- provide over 1,000 free HIV and STI tests to Chicago's most vulnerable populations
Our Projects: Addressing Child Malnutrition and Building a Local Partnership
GlobeMed is currently working with Margaret Asante, the head nurse at the HOPE Center, to support a community-based nutrition program as well as assist in data collection and evaluation. The nutrition program will consist of (1) creation of a small farm next to the Center from which the food will be used for education and demonstration of women in the community, (2) organize focal groups, seminars, and community discussions, (3) home visits to support mothers in preparation of weaning diet, and (4) provide special care and food to children who are currently malnourished. The program aims to reduce malnutrition in the community from 45% to 15% over the course of the next two years. GlobeMed will not only fund this project, but also help local staff on-site with data collection and analysis.
Through our BEHIV partnership, students are currently working with Billy Coats, the volunteer coordinator at BEHIV to create an effective and long-lasting partnership. Volunteers have been working at the BEHIV offices and going through training programs to become more educated about HIV/AIDS. This valuable volunteer work will hopefully lead to increasingly meaningful and engaging projects for GlobeMed at Northwestern. Also, GlobeMed at Northwestern's experiences at Chicago's BEHIV could have a profound impact on and applications to the VCT currently under way at the HOPE Center in Ghana. Our partnership with BEHIV will allow us to make valuable cross-cultural comparisons between the treatment of HIV in Chicago and in Ghana.
