Podcast

The Vanga Hospital began in a rural area of western Congo in 1920. Beginning in 1961 the hospital grew into a comprehensive and sustainable Christian health service run by the Congolese church in partnership with a missionary staff. The health system includes: (1) A 400 bed multi-specialty teaching hospital (2) A school for training nurse practitioners and nurse midwives (3) A widespread system of improving community health through dialogue and community initiatives (4) A decentralized network of rural health centers that make primary health care services accessible to the entire population of 250,000 in the catchment area
(5) A family medicine residency for Congolese family physicians (6) A team approach to caring for the whole person (7) An integrated approach to coping with the HIV-AIDS epidemic

This talk will examine cultural dynamics and work through the layers of culture from the outer layer of behavior down through the layers of values and beliefs to the core of worldview assumptions. Customs and health-related behavior derive from the basic assumptions about God, humankind, nature, and the origin of disease. Only when these worldview assumptions are understood and entry-points found to bring in new ideas can sustainable behavior change occur. Examples will be given.

Starting with the premise that God wants us to be healthy, this talk will outline the resources God makes available to us for living healthy lives. This includes (1) The biblical understanding of nature as orderly, with all created things functioning according to the natural laws God has built into them. (2) How the original man and woman rejected the order God had established in natural and human life. They brought on themselves and subsequent human history the consequences of disease, degeneration, and death. Ill health is our fault, not God’s fault. (3) Obedience to God’s laws favors health. This includes laws found in the Bible. (4) It also includes laws discovered by science for science studies what God has made. (5) Practical examples to demonstrate this.

Opportunities are increasing to teach colleagues, students, and others who speak and understand another language in which the teacher is not fluent. Such opportunities require the use of an interpreter. This session will consider: the need for interpreters, training in using them, professional vs. non-professional interpreters, preparing the interpreter for the session's), and the effectiveness of teaching through an interpreter. It will also touch on the use of translators, since they may also be needed if visual presentations or handouts are to be presented in the first language of the audience.

Professional nursing is the backbone of healthcare worldwide. Where nursing has not been recognized as a profession with its own knowledge and responsibilities to the public, healthcare has been affected. Bethel University and Uganda Christian University (UCUJ) have collaborated and joined forced to create academic programs in a rich Christian context to create well prepared nurses for the future of Uganda. Our partnership first created a degree completion program and currently the focus is on preparing nurse leaders at the masters’ level. This partnership has benefited both programs. A large number of Bethel University undergraduate senior nursing students spend January in Uganda, in the future some will spent a semester at UCU. Recently Masters’ student from UCU spent 10 weeks at Bethel’s campus. They took a combined class on Global Health with Bethel students. Bethel students reported the significant contribution of the UCU students to their learning. A number of Bethel faculty (and a few from elsewhere) are involved in teaching in the masters’ program taught modularly and online. This collaboration is empowering nurse leaders (particularly nurse educators) to advance the profession of nursing in Uganda. We hope to draw students from other parts of Africa to join in the masters’ program.