Heart to Heart

The ICHA Blog

Beyond the lab bench by Bruce Adams on August 30, 2009 | 3 comments

Originally from New Brunswick, Canada, my graduate science education and training across Canada eventually led me to San Francisco, where I work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Diabetes Center at the University of California. I come to know about with ICHA through a friend who is also volunteering. The spirit and values of this budding outreach program is a big draw for me. It’s an opportunity to blend my long-term interest, research, and fundraising activities in the biology of communicable diseases, and my growing interest in health and science education.

I am excited about learning about, and learning from, Ghanians. They are known for their friendliness, rich culture and history. I am particularly keen on this opportunity to work with health-care and community workers in Elmina, a coastal fishing community. As a bench scientist I believe I have much to learn from, and contribute to, outreach projects. Beyond the value of training paths focused on developing clinician-scientists (MDs who also are also active researchers), I believe there is a vast reserve of untapped potential in basic health-science researchers (of the Ph.D. variety), of which I am one.  We can contribute to, and benefit from, involvement in outreach projects because of our background in forming research questions, collecting and analyzing data, and health education, particularly in underserved communities worldwide, including Africa. I have little doubt that witnessing and managing the practicalities and challenges for health education, and application of treatments for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, can go a long way towards influencing our perspectives and future approaches in research.

In the long term, I believe Africans will be best served by local input and control over investment in health and science education. Ideally this will happen at the community level, in terms of public and healthcare worker education, as well as at regional and national levels, in the form of private and public investment in health and science education opportunities and infrastructure. In the short term, this investment by individual African countries may benefit from partnerships with organizations that can help with education efforts. This is my first opportunity to be actively involved with an outreach program on-site in Africa and I plan to apply my research and education background to provide ICHA support in helping achieve improved cardiovascular health in Elmina. There is a good chance my preconceptions and ideas about the culture and clinic setting I will experience don’t do any justice to the influence and impression that it will have on me…and that is the most exciting part of all!