Tuesday August 2nd 2011

The plan today was to clean the house and pack. I woke up at 8am and did an hour workout. After working out and feeling quite satisfied I ate breakfast and began to clean the kitchen and living room. While I was doing this I began to complete the left over laundry I had. Its so weird how much dirt accumulates in this house and how this house needs so much more scrubbing and cleaning for me to at least feel somewhat clean in it. A full garbage can later while also completing more than half of my laundry and cleaning the kitchen, throwing away vegetables, the house was in a much better state. I almost forgot my meeting and rushed on campus at 12:15pm. Upon reaching Dr. McKays office I discovered that I was an hour early but she agreed to still have the meeting. After talking and catching up I suggested having a nutrition intervention or exercise intervention. She loved it! We started making other interventions ideas and she discussed the importance of getting in touch with Dr. Corvin especially in moving the project forward.

Dr, McKay also talked about involving the University of Southern California, Victoria University and Viturbia University. USF would still remain as the central university since this is mainly our project but having other involvement will help in asking the project actually work.  We also discussed the importance of the professional development of Alicia and Tita especially with sustainability. I also discussed the importance of removing the stigma surrounding mental health in San Martin and having that become a component of our project. McKay loved that idea. 

Another idea Dr. McKay suggested was a focus on men’s health issues especially since Public Health has really focused on Women’s health and women’s issues which are important but the lack of focus on men’s health has pushed many people away. I agree, we definitely have to redraw public health to include everyone. We also have to start looking for funds for our projects and writing proposals, which should be extremely exciting because there are many calls to proposals currently for the Caribbean and Central America Region. My only fear is that the project may loose the focus we have wanted to target if others involved do not understand where we want to go with this. I also worry about the sustainability of the project.