Nourish and the Health and Sanitation Campaign

After a frustrating week of planning, our health assessment surveys are finally underway.

Yesterday we began our surveying in Cerro Blanco, the first village on our list in the middle valley. Equipped with the map we made last week, which after several drafts was incomplete at best, seven of us partnered up with Peruvian nurses and volunteers to conduct the assessments. We had chosen a random sample of households and quickly found that sticking to that sample was harder than we had hoped. We found ourselves traipsing narrow paths through sugar cane fields and up the craggy slopes of the cerro in search of the next house, which was often unoccupied.

A view of the valley from the hills.

Still, having spent the last week going back to the drawing board to redesign the latrines, redraw the maps, and rewrite the health surveys, it was a relief to finally start the assessments. I was surprised and moved at the openness of the participants, who without exception have welcomed us into their homes to share details about their families’ health. The questionnaires, designed for female heads of household and female interviewers, probe on sanitation and hygiene, common illnesses and injuries, pre- and post-natal health, domestic violence, access to care, and other topics.

 Our work over the past few days has given us insight into the difficult process of community-based health research, especially as a team with a diversity of backgrounds and experiences. We are continually learning from each other about how best to conduct these surveys with professionalism as well as with compassion and respect. The interviews themselves provide a window for understanding the communities we serve, their strengths and needs, and the potential for improvement of preventative health services like latrines and education programs.

From left: Kevin, Katie, Vera, Paula and Linda in Bello Horizonte for a community meeting.

Talking to community members outside of the survey context has encouraged and energized us. We had the serendipitous fortune of meeting Sr. Rodrigo in Quirihuac, who offered us maps of most of the villages in the Moche, thus saving us days of mapping. Still dumbfounded by our good luck, we listened to his story about another group of gringos who had come to Ciudad de Dios last year to build a water system. “Do you know that place?” he asked. “It’s like it’s received a touch of light, un toque de luz.” 

Looking over the new-found maps of households in the valley.