{"id":146998,"date":"2026-09-29T09:29:56","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/?post_type=bu-article&p=146998"},"modified":"2026-09-29T09:29:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T13:29:57","slug":"destination-africa-students-spent-their-summer-volunteering-in-malawi-and-ghana","status":"publish","type":"bu-article","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/news-events\/articles\/2026\/destination-africa-students-spent-their-summer-volunteering-in-malawi-and-ghana\/","title":{"rendered":"Destination: Africa. Students Spent their Summer Volunteering in Malawi and Ghana"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
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BU medical students on Kasungu Hill in Malawi with members of the nonprofit K2 TASO. Peter Minjale (second from left), executive director of K2 TASO, Riya Paluri (CAS\u201926, CAMED\u201929) and Alison Chilcott (CAMED\u201929) (third and fourth from left), and Joel George (CAMED\u201929) and Jesse Fletcher (CAMED\u201929) (sixth and seventh from left). Photo courtesy of Alison Chilcott<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t

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Global Health scholarship offered an opportunity to work for nonprofit organizations, caring for local residents. <\/h4>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\n
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September 29, 2026<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t\t
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This summer vacation this year was everything Jesse Fletcher, a second-year student at BU\u2019s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, could have hoped for: five weeks in the southern African winter, working for a grassroots nonprofit in one of the poorest countries in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were tackling serious, serious issues with a positive attitude,\u201d says Fletcher (CAMED\u201929), who traveled to Malawi with classmates Joel George (CAMED\u201929), Alison Chilcott (CAMED\u201929), and Riya Paluri (CAS\u201926, CAMED\u201929).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had arranged the trip through Bridges to Malawi<\/a>, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that supports community health initiatives there, and helps place BU medical students with its Malawi-based partner K2 TASO,<\/a> which works on projects to improve rural health, education, women\u2019s empowerment, and agriculture. Supported by a BU medical school scholarship, the students conducted hundreds of needs assessment interviews as well as home visits for at-risk patients. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The view from inside a clinic in Mthiko. Photo by Alison Chilcott (CAMED\u201929)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are two points at which medical students typically engage in global health and are financially supported: The summer after their first year of medical school, through the Global Health Summer Scholarship Program<\/a>, they participate in research, language immersion, or community health projects; and during their fourth year, a four-week clinical elective is supported by a travel grant. Nine students qualified for Global Health scholarships this summer, with destinations in Africa, Taiwan, and Central America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The projects that students work on overseas must have legitimate and consequential goals and outcomes, but that is not the only objective, says Joseph Leanza<\/a>, an assistant professor of emergency medicine and director of global health at the medical school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe intention, and often the result, is offering them a broader perspective of how healthcare is practiced in other places, both the pros and cons,\u201d says Leanza, a veteran of numerous global healthcare projects and programs, with ongoing initiatives in Iraq, Ukraine, and Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe hope that they find some purpose or motivation beyond their academic interests, and that they are inspired to work for those with less resources and opportunities,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Malawi, where 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence farming, healthcare needs are diverse and great. Fletcher says he and his classmates were inspired by the energy, dedication, and work ethic of K2 TASO\u2019s executive director, Peter Minjale, who hosted the four students while they were in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was just tireless in helping people; he never stopped,\u201d says Fletcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Riya Paluri (CAS\u201926, CAMED\u201929) (left) and Alison Chilcott in Msiwa, Malawi. Photo courtesy of Alison Chilcott<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The poverty was real and daunting. The medical students occasionally accompanied Minjale on calls to patient homes in the country\u2019s central region, many of which had no running water or electricity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it rains, a lot of water gets into the house, and when you go inside, typically there\u2019s no power, no overhead lighting,\u201d recalls George. Some patients slept on dirt floors, with bundled clothes for a pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very different, stepping into a patient\u2019s home, playing with their children and interacting with their family members, and seeing where they sleep,\u201d says George. \u201cThis gives me more experience to draw on as I\u2019m talking to patients (in Boston), that there are all kinds of factors that contribute to their health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Access to health care in Malawi remains a major issue. Distances between healthcare clinics and hospitals represent a barrier to receiving care. The students\u2019 work with K2 TASO explored ways to incorporate geriatric care and pediatric care into existing centers, like schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their limited resources, Malawians recently achieved a major milestone in fighting HIV\/AIDS, meeting UN goals for testing, antiretroviral therapy, and viral load suppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cK2 TASO has a lot of creative ways of generating money to make sure that the healthcare and the medication are free,\u201d says Paluri. \u201cThey harvested honey, grew crops, had a chicken coop and a dairy farm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Natasha Soesanto (CAMED\u201929) in Ghana, where she spent her summer vacation working with the nonprofit Project SHIELD-AC on sudden unexpected death in infancy issues. Photo courtesy of Natasha Soesanto<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Natasha Soesanto (CAMED\u201929) had no global health experience when she applied for a scholarship to work for seven weeks on sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) issues in Ghana and Zambia. As an undergrad, she\u2019d volunteered in the United States for a Nepal-based nonprofit and worked as an AmeriCorps case manager at a federally qualified health center, mainly serving refugees from Central America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soesanto had a peripatetic childhood. Born in the US, she and her family lived in Indonesia, Singapore, and London, before settling in the San Francisco Bay area. That experience inspired her to explore global health as a medical student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With funding from the summer scholarship, she worked for Project SHIELD-AC (Survey of Health, Infant Environment, and Social Determinants in African Countries), funded by the American SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) Institute, and mentored by Julie Herlihy<\/a>, a clinical associate professor of global health and pediatrics at BU\u2019s School of Public Health. Soesanto\u2019s goals for the summer included collecting risk factor data, recruiting participants for group discussions and interviews, and leading group discussions with mothers and healthcare providers. She was based in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, working at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and in the rural Shai-Osudoku District about 2 hours northeast of the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would highly encourage anyone who has that curiosity to at least go overseas and have experiences you\u2019ve never had before, to learn and collaborate with people outside of your own community and understand that the world is a much bigger place,\u201d Soesanto says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jesse Fletcher (CAMED\u201929) (from left) Joel George (CAMED\u201929), Alison Chilcott (CAMED\u201929), and Riya Paluri (CAS\u201926, CAMED\u201929) on the summit of Kasungu Hill in Malawi. Photo courtesy of Jesse Fletcher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The BU students also found it encouraging that the medical establishment in both Ghana and Malawi incorporated traditional indigenous medicine into healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think seeing that has been a very positive experience for me,\u201d says Chilcott, \u201cjust knowing that there are so many ways to do medicine, there are so many ways for healthcare to happen, and that there\u2019s no one right way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all the goals that medical students set for summer projects could be met. Bureaucratic red tape sometimes played havoc with their relatively short time in-country. While Soesanto was able to conduct focus group discussions, train data collectors, and travel to rural villages, permission from the ethics board in Ghana for risk factor <\/strong>data collection didn\u2019t arrive until after she had returned to Boston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the experience motivated her to maintain her Ghanaian contacts, and she continues to participate in weekly Zoom meetings on the research project with Herlihy and the team in Ghana. Soesanto hopes to return to Ghana periodically to continue the work she started this summer and plans on applying for the fourth-year global health elective to travel abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cFor me,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s a huge success because of the connections I made, being able to immerse myself in a different country, learning about their public health system, and figuring out what it takes to establish an international study.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer vacation this year was everything Jesse Fletcher, a second-year student at BU\u2019s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, could have hoped for: five weeks in the southern African winter, working for a grassroots nonprofit in one of the poorest countries in the world. \u201cWe were tackling serious, serious issues with a positive attitude,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":147031,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bu_prepress_billboard":"","_bu_prepress_primary_term":"Student Life","_bu_prepress_primary_term_manual":""},"tags":[358,405,457],"bu-publication":[367],"medicine-article-category":[],"medicine-topic":[],"news-article-category":[384,449],"news-topic":[],"bu_edition":[],"media_type":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/146998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/bu-article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146998"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/146998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147034,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-article\/146998\/revisions\/147034"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"bu-publication","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu-publication?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-article-category?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"medicine-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/medicine-topic?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"news-article-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-article-category?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"news-topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-topic?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"bu_edition","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bu_edition?post=146998"},{"taxonomy":"media_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media_type?post=146998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}