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After an intense, monthlong journey into Mexico for a crash course on language, culture and health care practices, 11 second-year medical students from the School of Medicine are returning to volunteer in health and social service centers that serve Hispanic populations in the St. Louis area.
The training mission is new to St. Louis and is much needed due to the area's rapidly growing Hispanic community. The group training mission is unique to St. Louis. In the past, several medical students have traveled individually to Ecuador, Armenia, Turkey and southeast Asia. The students apply their skills working to ensure the health care needs of refugees and immigrants from Mexico, Vietnam, Somalia, Ethiopia, Bosnia and Iraq.
Nancy Klepper from the department of community and family medicine coordinates the group training mission through an elective course in international health care. She is a member of the International Health Medical Education Consortium, consisting of more than 100 medical schools worldwide. The consortium places medical students in developing countries throughout the world to learn health care issues.
"The thrust of the trip was to immerse the students in the culture of the Mexican health care system," Klepper said.
"It is important to understand the culture so that physicians will have a culturally sensitive impact on the health care these immigrants receive," she said. "It is a very big problem for doctors now who don't understand the patients' culture. You have to know what is culturally appropriate to ask medical questions that will elicit the answers you need to properly treat and diagnose."
The 11 medical students traveled to Oaxaca, about 300 miles south of Mexico City. Most had never spoken Spanish before the trip. The intense language training took place at El Institudo Cultural Oaxaca. They also visited several health clinics in outlying rural areas, focusing on traditional Mexican medicine and maternal/child health issues. Most of the Hispanic immigrants in the St. Louis area are from Mexico.
The medical students also have set up a Hispanic interest group at the School of Medicine to make sure that there are volunteers ready to work in Hispanic health clinics in St. Louis.
It is estimated that there are as many as 55,000 Hispanics living in the metropolitan area.
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