Activities

1. El Hospital Lenin Fonseca
Between September 4 – 16th, UCLA Project Nicaragua will be working with El Hospital Lenin Fonseca in Managua, Nicaragua. In addition to providing medical supply donations, UCLA PN members will shadow and assist physicians.

The goals of this activity are:
1. To provide material and human resources to El Hospital Lenin Fonseca, the only public hospital in the capital city of Managua.
2. To acquaint students with medical environment in Managua
3. To allow undergraduate students interested in healthcare to gain medical experience

2. Epidemiology research
UCLA Project Nicaragua will study the health issues relevant to Nicaraguans.

The goals of this research are:
1. To identify important health issues prevalent in Nicaraguans
2. To use this knowledge to enhance the relevancy and efficacy of our activities

3. Barriers to healthcare research
UCLA Project Nicaragua is resuming its spina bifida research. Read more about our past contribution to pass a legislation to fortify rice in Nicaragua.

The goal of this research is to identify the barriers that families have in receiving healthcare.

4. Clinical outreach
We’re piloting a clinical outreach project to bring service to Nicaraguans without access to healthcare. Our focus will involve medical services and health education in areas of blood pressure screening, blood glucose screening, BMI determination, vision checking, and more.

5. Scholarship project

The Scholarship Committee is grounded on the principle to provide a service that has a lasting and self-sustainable effect on improving access to quality healthcare in Nicaragua. The scholarship will accomplish this by approaching it from three avenues. They are, (1) increase the physician to population ratio, (2) empower members of communities to become proactive and responsible leaders, and lastly, (3) increase traffic and communication between the hard to reach areas and the medical community.
Project Nicaragua will be distributing full scholarships to underprivileged students who show promising career in medicine as a way to combat the low levels of physician to population ratio. Recipients will be connected to a physician mentor in Nicaragua who will guide the students in local outreach/research projects and receive feedback from recipients on unaccounted hurdles present during their track to becoming a professional physician.

Project Nicaragua will be choosing recipients from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua – Managua, Facultad de Ciencias Medicas. Most of the students attending this university are from regions away from the pacific which constitutes much of the impoverished regions of Nicaragua. It is for strategic reasons that we have chosen this University. Not only because the school constitutes Nicaraguans from the poorest regions of Nicaragua, but also, for cultural and linguistic barriers and trust reasons, it is more effective when students return to their own communities to educate, set up mobile clinics and provide solutions to communication and traffic to nearby clinics.”