Villanova Global Medical Brigades Chapter Continue to Assist Central American Communities Despite the Pandemic

Catherine Implicito and Sage Zunda on a previous Global Medical Brigades trip

Many colleges and universities have chapters with Global Medical Brigades, a program to promote global health and sustainable development. They also promote sustainable volunteering, which is a more ethical approach to helping communities. 

Villanova’s Global Medical Brigades chapter, which started in 2019, usually works alongside communities to provide public health in under resourced areas in many countries including Honduras and Panama. But this year, volunteering looked very different.

Founders and co-presidents Catherine Implicito ’21 CLAS and Sage Zunda ’21 CLAS, had to shift the Global Medical Brigades volunteer program to be remote. How can you shift such an immersive experience to a virtual one?

Catherine and Sage were able to hold a brigade completely online by creating their first telebrigade.

“We were able to Zoom with doctors and community health workers in Honduras and Guatemala to talk to them about what was going on in their country during the pandemic,” said Implicito. “They spoke about their different healthcare systems, cultural competence and medical Spanish. But between those calls, we would meet as a chapter and independently research and learn about different needs of the community and the social determinants of health.”

They were still able to make their goal, raising over $8,000 and had 45 volunteers attend the telebrigade. In fact, their membership grew this year and now has over 60 members.

Alongside the educational sessions, volunteers were able to see the communities they were helping. In the rural areas, it would be a montage because there was no wi-fi access. The urban clinics were able to be livestreamed.

Though a different experience, Catherine noted it was incredibly influential. “Usually there would be children running around everywhere and we would help them brush their teeth and create these close contact relationships with the people that we were serving,” said Implicito. “But just seeing everyone wearing masks and social distancing, seeing these places going through similar things that we are going through ignited a passion to keep wanting to help even though we can't be there right now.”

Another responsibility as volunteers was to bring hygiene supplies such as toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant and soap. Catherine and Sage, through outreach in their local communities, were able to collect over 1,000 donations to send to Honduras.

“There is a trend of voluntourism, which is the term that's being coined for people going and exploiting communities where they're not wanted or not helping enough to keep that community going,” said Implicito. “They’ll start helping and then abandon those communities.”

Despite pandemic-related challenges, Catherine and Sage found a way to continue Global Medical Brigade’s mission at Villanova –– continually motivated by a passion to serve and learn. Catherine is considering a master’s degree in public health and planning to pursue medical school.  Sage, who is also pursuing medical school, was inspired by Global Medical Brigades to further assist international communities.  Both wish to continue their involvement in any way possible with Global Medical Brigades throughout medical school.

“I'm really interested in doing international rotations during medical school and getting involved in any global or public health organizations,” said Zunda.