The Epic Health Seminar, A Prologue

A few months ago, we started building our first four composting latrines in my community and the rest of my community started clamoring for the health seminar I told them they had to attend in order to enter the project. The earliest I could get it scheduled was March 6-8, working around the schedules of the other Volunteers I needed to come help do it, the time I needed to create and prepare the seminar, and the other events going on in Panama like GAD Camp and my Field IST.

I asked each of the 4 Volunteers coming to help with my seminar to design a workshop around one of the four topics I focused my seminar on: handwashing, clean water, composting latrines, and household cleanliness. I sent them notes I took from the books Switch (see behavior change blog) and Made to Stick (see sticky ideas blog). I did NOT want to make my seminar a series of lectures with half the audience asleep and the other half picking at bug bites. I wanted it to be 3 days of activities where they were so engaged that at the end they did not even realize they had learned things.

I spent several days at the end of January going around house to house with a formal invitation to my seminar, getting a list of the name, ages, and gender of every member of the household, and asking them 9 questions about their family's health. I know a lot of people weren't always completely honest with me, but the majority were refreshingly candid and straightforward.

I learned there are 262 people in my community, living in 57 homes. It is split evenly men and women, and half the community is under the age of 15. (107 kids, to be exact.)

Question 1- What are the most common illnesses in your family?

58% of those listed were stomach illnesses like diarrhea, vomiting, and stomachaches. 24% listed were colds.

Question 2- What do you think causes illnesses in your family?

35% had no idea, 22% said from bad water. The other half of the responses were all over the board from sunshine to working to lack of medicine to candy.

Question 3- How many times has someone in this house been sick in the last month?

97 illnesses in total were reported from Christmas to the end of January. 66% of families reported 1-3 illnesses a month, with some reporting up to 13.

Question 4- What can be done to prevent illnesses?

40% believe there is no control over one's health, it is at the will of God, chance, or nature. 40% think it is the responsibility of doctors and medicine to prevent illnesses, and 20% know at least 1 way they can improve their own health (handwashing, clean water, clean house, using a latrine)

Question 5- Where does your family poop?

84% use the river and/or the jungle. 16% have pit latrines in poor condition.

Question 6- How many times have you washed your hands today with soap?

0- 22%

1-29%

2-15%

3-20%

4-10%

5-2%

10-2%

...yea, there were some liars in this bunch.

Question 7- Where does your drinking water come from and how do you treat it?

When it is rainy, (9 months of the year) 96% drink rain water straight without treating it. During the dry season, 67.5% drink the brown river water straight without treating it. 26% reported sometimes using bleach to purify their water, but didn't use enough of it to be effective.

Question 8- Where do you brush your teeth?

Half of them brush their teeth in the river, the other half at home.

Question 9- What is the most important health issue this community needs to address?

Half of them said things like latrines, water, trash. Another quarter had no idea.

I compiled all of this info into hand sketched circle graphs and summaries and shared it with my health seminar superhero team making workshops. Also, while my original plans for the seminar including addressing topics like solid waste and grey water, I realized my community was not there yet and that I needed to pare it down. Step 1 is to get them to treat their water, poop in a hole, and wash their hands. Trash and standing water is still important and necessary, but not the MOST important.

I talked about my seminar constantly and every day people would ask me which days it was again, which excited me because it meant they were thinking about it and taking it seriously. I spent hours on the phone brainstorming and discussing it with my other Volunteers. I went to Meteti and sat in the one air conditioned restaurant on a wooden bench from 9am-3pm typing out the health seminar manual on my touch screen tablet. Finally, around the beginning of March, I got super fed up with planning for this seminar and started counting down the hours until it would be over.

After months of research, brainstorming, planning, and preparation, I was ready.