Why did 11 public health students from Harvard and Johns Hopkins spend the entire month of January in the South Texas/Border Region? Why did other students put their names on a waiting list to come?
The answer is a course that gives physicians and other health care professionals an eyewitness view of the environment’s impact on the health of border residents. This includes water and air quality, infectious disease, sanitation and more.
The course is offered by the South Texas Environmental Education and Research (STEER) Program, a part of the Health Science Center’s department of family and community medicine. The elective has been offered in Laredo since 1996. “The ultimate goal is to train compassionate health care providers who will spearhead a drive for better health along the border and in similar situations nationwide,” said STEER Program Director Claudia S. Miller, M.D., a professor in the department of family and community medicine.
Ten students from the Harvard University School of Public Health and one from the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health traveled to Laredo on Jan. 4 to be challenged with what they learned and experienced at locations throughout Laredo and Nuevo Laredo.
The STEER offices are in the D.D. Hachar Building on the Health Science Center’s Laredo Extension Campus. Other course locations included a field trip to learn about natural plants used for medicinal purposes, a maquiladora plant in Nuevo Laredo and water sampling at four sites along the Rio Grande. The students also participated in a “market basket survey” in which they put themselves in the shoes of colonia families and attempted to buy nutritious food for a month on a budget of $40. The students then delivered the groceries to the families. They were amazed at the challenges people face on both sides of the border.
“STEER environmental training coordinators Joan Engelhardt, a registered nurse, and Roger Perales, a registered sanitarian, who lead the program in Laredo, make sure that students have hands-on, face-to-face, community-based experiences that they will not soon forget,” Dr. Miller said.
The Harvard and Johns Hopkins students included one neurosurgeon from China and three students who are completing master of public health degrees between their third and fourth years of medical school. The others are majoring in some aspect of public health, such as international health, health policy and management, or health education and health promotion.
“The students are earning credit for their required Environmental Science course at Harvard by taking the STEER elective, which speaks volumes to us about how the STEER experience is regarded nationwide,” Perales noted.
For more information on STEER, go to
steer.uthscsa.edu/index.html.
