I'm new to the blog thing, so bear with me. The purpose of this is to show my friends and family what I'm doing this summer (probably mostly pictures), but I'd certainly like to know what you all are doing also, so please don't hesitate to write me!
Just in case you don't know where I'm going and why, here's the background:
I'll be in American Samoa for about 2 months doing a research project on the barriers to prenatal care on the island. My adviser has worked in this region for over 10 years because they have an unusually high prevalence of type 2 diabetes (close to 20%!). Last year I was working on analyzing a data set collected by a Brown medical student on gestational diabetes (a type of diabetes that arises during pregnancy, she also noticed high levels of this in American Samoa). Since gestational diabetes is tested for during a very specific time period during a woman's pregnancy (typically between the 24th and 28th weeks), receiving prenatal care during this time is especially important. Prenatal care is also necessary for a variety of other reasons that improve pregnancy outcomes and the health of both the mother and baby. However, we noticed that the usage of prenatal care was actually pretty low; women were not coming in for prenatal services early enough, if at all. So... here follows my project! I'm trying to figure out why the women aren't coming in frequently and/or early by administering survey and conducting personal interviews with women coming in to the hospital.
After a 22 hour journey to get here, I arrived last night. We're 7 hours behind here in Samoa. This is getting long, so all I'll say now is that it's absolutely beautiful and the people I've met so far are great! Pictures to come soon...
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