Global Health Newsletter
Niños Primeros en Salud: A Very Successful Year
Barrio children visited by the 2011 Niños Primeros en Salud team.
Between April 2011 and April 2012, the Niños Primeros en Salud (NPS) team, which includes local physicians and residents, a nurse, and the CHOP Global Health fellow, provided high-quality, compassionate, reliable primary care during 2,391 patient visits to more than 450 children under the age of 5 in the poorest barrios, or neighborhoods, of Consuelo, Dominican Republic. Highlights of the program include:
- Ninety-seven percent of children in the program received DPT3 vaccine and Polio 3 vaccine by 12 months of age (compared to 88 percent and 86 percent national rates, respectively) and 97 percent of children received the measles vaccine by 16 months of age (compared to the 79 percent national rate).
- Because of the huge burden of parasitic illnesses in the barrios, the NPS team delivered over 3,000 albendazole tablets to children and adults during deworming campaigns, which occur every six months in each of the barrios.
- Our team of 10 health promoters has been trained by La Leche League International (LLLI) to act as lactation consultants for pregnant women in the barrios. The health promoters visit women in their homes and at the hospital immediately after the birth of their children to encourage woman to exclusively breastfeed. More than 50 women participate on a monthly basis in mother-to-mother support groups in community centers and churches in their neighborhoods to learn more about the benefits of breastfeeding.
- Twenty-four pediatric residents from Hospital Infantil Robert Reid Cabral, a large pediatric hospital in the capital of the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, will complete their rotations through the NPS clinic in June 2012. A new group of the country’s future pediatricians will soon begin their community health rotations in Consuelo, where they learn first-hand about the impoverished conditions that many of their patients come from. This year’s residents, under the leadership of the NPS clinic attending physician, Ingrid Japa, MD, published two articles, “Causes of Acute Diarrheal Illness in 0-5-year-olds between April and September, 2010” and “The Incidence and Characteristics of Children with Malnutrition in the Niños Primeros en Salud Program” in the Revista Medica del Este, a regional medical journal published quarterly in the Dominican Republic.
New Global Health Initiatives
Nutrition Education
Illustration from a new book about healthy eating for families in the Dominican Republic.
As a result of a nutrition study completed by Lindy Fenlason, MD, a nutrition fellow at CHOP, and the NPS clinical team in the Dominican Republic, data on nutritional habits and eating behavior in malnourished children in the barrios were collected and analyzed. The data were reviewed with the clinical team in the Dominican Republic and the Global Health nutrition team in Philadelphia (Rebecca Randall, MS, RD, LDN, Rebecca Thomas, RD, LDN., and Maura Murphy, MPH).
The team partnered with CHOP’s Marketing Department to use “Kids Health Galaxy” characters to produce a culturally appropriate education book about healthy eating. The book will soon be piloted in the Dominican Republic. The healthy eating information focuses on making the correct nutritional choices in the face of growing accessibility to inexpensive junk food and sweets in the community.
Health Promoter Education
An evidence-based curriculum and training program are currently in development for the NPS health promoters in the Dominican Republic. CHOP’s interdisciplinary planning committee (Layla Ware de Luria, MSW, Barbara Picard, CRNP, Sheyla Medina and Ajoa Abrokwa, MSH Ed./HA) is writing a culturally competent curriculum for the health promoters that focuses on pediatric health, as well as life skills.
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