St. Kitts and Nevis Fieldwork Experiences
Janet Lin bio Heading link
Janet Lin is the Director of Health Systems Development in the Center of Global Health. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at University of Illinois at Chicago and has an Affiliate appointment in the Division of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health. She is also Director of the International Emergency Medicine and Health Program in the Department of Emergency Medicine.
Janet is in St Kitts and Nevis in the Summer of 2019 to work on Community Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction Training. This is continued work to expand a community engagement in disaster risk reduction training program created originally in Haiti to other Caribbean island nations. Last year the program completed a community disaster preparedness assessment on the two islands and this year the findings from this study were presented to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) of St. Kitts and Nevis as well as the Nevis Disaster Management Department (NDMD). Additionally, she and her team adapted and are delivering the disaster risk reduction training program to local members identified by NEMA and NDMD to promote community resilience.
Janet Lin's blog Heading link
Week 1
We just completed our first week of training on the island of Nevis. What an inspirational group of people! There was a ton of energy from UIC and the Nevisian participants.
Week 1
Backgrounds ranged anywhere from youth development ambassadors, teachers, nurses, women’s development leaders, and CERTS (community emergency response teams). Theme for the week was to understand how hazards and vulnerability can increase risk for negative impacts that turn can into disasters; and, more importantly, what communities can do about it.
Week 1
Our students, representing public health, medicine, and the Honors college at UIC all got their “feet wet” and helped to facilitate the training.
Week 1
Plus, we had another UIC SPH alum join us for the training. At the end of the week, we all had a much-deserved couple of days to explore the island of Nevis!
Gina Chapman bio Heading link
Gina Chapman is a second year Community Health Sciences and Global Health MPH student. Gina has a passion for traveling and a drive for health awareness. She is spending a portion of her summer in St. Kitts and Nevis working with the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) and Nevis Disaster Management Department (NDMD) working with the community to create awareness for hurricanes and other natural disasters. The rest of her time there she will be participating in the Community Based Risk Reduction Program with faculty and students of UIC. These programs will give Gina a wide range of hands-on experiences in public and community health while creating professional relations with the communities of St Kitts and Nevis.
Gina Chapman's Blog Heading link
Gina's blog post
My first week in Nevis has been really exciting. A little background on Nevis: it is a small island in the Caribbean sea that neighbors St Kitts (where I will be for the last half of my time here). It’s about 36 square miles and has about 11,000 residents. I actually drove around the entire island in less than an hour! If it sounds familiar to you, it’s because it is the birthplace and childhood home of Alexander Hamilton. English is the official language but many residents are from other islands or the UK and speak other languages.
Gina's blog post
I honestly didn’t know what to expect as I arrived a few days earlier than the rest of my group. This gave me the opportunity to intern for the Nevis Disaster Management Department (NDMD) for a few days and get an inside look at the community of Nevis and make relations with people at NDMD, the local schools and churches and around the community. My responsibilities during this time were to pair up with one of the Community Outreach Coordinators, Jack, and assist him with the Disaster Awareness for the month of June. June is hurricane system in St Kitts and Nevis (and surrounding islands). Jack introduced me to some teachers and students who helped create a PSA (see above) for us. It was my job to help them with creating the PSA and to do public interviews within the community to spread awareness of hurricane awareness month.
Gina's blog post
I also had the opportunity to get to know a girl from Dominica who was displaced after Hurricane Maria destroyed much of her island. She now lives in Nevis and let me interview her about her experience with that. This was particularly important to me as a Chicago native, I never experienced a natural disaster like that one and hearing it from her, it made me realize what some people went through after Hurricane Maria. I’ll try to find our video when it is published and post it here.
Gina's blog post
The island is HOT HOT HOT. We didn’t have air conditioning in our first air bnb which made me adapt to the heat pretty quickly. We stayed at the top of this mountain that was a steep decline to the beach, but we still made the journey every day and enjoyed lots of local foods! Next week we will have a total of 10 UIC students, mostly medical students and two other MPH students, and two facilitators for our Disaster Risk Reduction training.
Daniel Drzewiecki Bio Heading link
Daniel Drzewiecki, MPH in Epidemiology ’19, traveled to St. Kitts and Nevis to conduct a needs assessment for disaster preparedness with a combined research team from UIC and UNC. This needs assessment will involve conducting community surveys, key informant interviews, data cleaning, data entry, and data analysis. St. Kitts and Nevis were mostly unscathed by the 2017 hurricanes, making these islands an area of interest for disaster preparedness research. Read more about these experiences and Daniel’s exploring of the islands in the blog posts below.
July 10, 2018 Heading link
Daniel's blog post
After an initial 7 hour flight delay, flight change, an Uber to Miami from Fort Lauderdale, and a ferry from St. Kitts, we have officially settled into our rooms in Nevis! It was a bit of a rough boat ride with Tropical Storm Beryl approaching the night of our arrival, but we made it safely and even avoided the rain. Our first day was spent meeting with the director of NDMD, the Nevis Disaster Management Division, and listening to a presentation of the disaster management system on Nevis. After meeting with our other research team members from the University of Northern Colorado and discussing our surveying methods for the following day, we were excited to begin data collection the following day. We even visited the Hamilton House, the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton and the gentleman on your $10 bill! I am learning a plethora of information about disaster preparedness and the organizations that are involved in planning here in Nevis. As someone who wants to work in this area of public health upon finishing my degree, this has been a great opportunity to become familiar with the process of disaster preparedness so far. I’m excited to see what the next two weeks have in store!
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Conference Picture
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Picture of a house
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Museum of Nevis History
Daniel's blog post
Our first week is officially complete! We gathered over 100 surveys, multiple key informant interviews, and many community informant interviews throughout Nevis. So far, we have been receiving vastly different responses to our surveys based on varying demographic information, which will be helpful for designing a disaster preparedness plan for future return visits. Today, we took the ferry from Nevis to St. Kitts, and are now settled into our new home for the next 9 days. Our plan is to gather 25 surveys from each parish throughout St. Kitts this week, of which there are 9 total parishes. Yesterday was spent hiking a volcano for 6 hours, going on a boat ride along the coast of Nevis, and celebrating Gwyneth’s birthday at Sunshine’s Beach Bar! Not only was I stung by a bee during the hike (thankfully I am not allergic), but it was the most physically intense hike I have ever been on. Most portions included steep inclines that we had to use ropes to climb, and while we are still physically recovering today, we all survived! The summit was chilly, cloudy, and windy, so unfortunately for us we were not able to see any portions of the island. We did, however, sign the book that all past hikers have signed!
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Group photo
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Photo of notes
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Group photo
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As of yesterday, we have officially finishing gathering all of our surveys and are currently in the data cleaning and analysis phase of our project! In total, we have gathered approximately 344 surveys for quantitative analysis and multiple key informant interviews for qualitative analysis. This week was spent largely gathering surveys throughout the 8 districts in St. Kitts, but we also did some sightseeing at Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park. Built hundreds of years ago, the government of St. Kitts & Nevis has done a really nice job of preserving the history and beauty of the fortress itself. Check out that view! From its highest point, you have a bird’s-eye view of the natural beauty of St. Kitts itself. We are going to miss working with the other half of our research team from the University of Northern Colorado as they fly back home this afternoon, but we have planned to stay in touch, especially as we determine what the next step in the project is upon completing the data analysis. These last two weeks spent in St. Kitts & Nevis has been wonderful (and quite humid!) and I will miss it dearly. We have one final meeting with the director of NEMA on Monday to discuss the results from our initial analysis before we fly home on Tuesday. I am looking forward to a fruitful meeting, safe flight home, and my sunburn healing. As promised, I would also like to give a huge shout out to Dr. Janet Lin, Dr. Gwyneth Milbrath, Lexi Palacios, Hannah Wavering, and Alena Hoover from UIC for being an amazing team over the last two weeks!
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Group photo
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Photo of a field
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Photo of a courtyard
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Photo of a field