Pulse - Fall 2009

              TABLE OF CONTENTS
Public health nursing in Nicaragua...........1
Message from Nancy Lynch......................2
Pediatric Palliative Care............................2
Umbdenstock and healthcare reform........3
Scott MacDonald Award............................4
Dr. Grossman honored..............................4
Welcome Cathleen Dooley.........................5
Faculty news ............................................5
Commencement 2009........................... 6-7
Student Saves a Life.................................8
Walter Reed Trip ......................................8
Oslo partnership ......................................9
Gifts & Grants.........................................11
Message from the Dean..........................12
PULSE The
www.fairfield.edu/nursing
Fall 2009
Public health nursing in Nicaragua
by Nina Riccio, M.A. ’09
Civic and community
engagement are hall-marks
of Jesuit edu-cation,
and examples can be
seen in all schools and at all
levels at Fairfield University.
But every once in a while,
there is a story that fits the
mission so perfectly that it
must be told.
Such is the story of the
Nicaragua trip for under-graduate
nursing students last
spring. All undergraduates
must take a public health
nursing course, and Professor
Lydia Greiner offered them
the option of taking it in
Nicaragua, where they
could work with social
work students from the Universidad
Centroamericana (UCA), a Jesuit institu-tion
with which Fairfield often partners.
Twelve students – from the traditional
undergraduate, second degree and adult
programs – jumped at the chance and
spent a week in a neighborhood within
Managua, interviewing residents to find
out their most pressing health concerns,
mapping homes in terms of location and
number of people in the household, and
determining the neighborhood’s assets.
“This was an asset-based assessment,”
notes Dr. Philip Greiner, who co-taught
the course with his wife. “Working
with the social workers from UCA, our
students found both the strengths and
the risks in the community. We want to
know what works, why residents stay,
what they don’t want changed and what
they are working to fix.” Assets identified
were the resiliency, optimism, skills, and
resourcefulness of the people, as well as
their ongoing collaboration with UCA.
The risks were primarily environmentally
related; a large reservoir flooded each
rainy season, for example, creating major
health issues such as malaria and dengue
for those living in that section of the
neighborhood.
But the team learned that their big-gest
health concerns were not necessarily
shared by those in the community. “We
FAIRFIELD UNIVERSITY
A PUBL I C A T ION OF THE S CHOOL OF NURS ING
Professor Lydia Greiner, center, conducts interviews with
residents of Managua’s Ayapal neighborhood.
continued on page 10