Blog 2, By Maria Bala

My original plan coming here was to have a resource database tailored toward the children who are part of FNE’s program called Salud Para Todos los Niños, which provides specialty pediatric care for children with chronic conditions such as cerebral palsy and Down syndrome. However, I had to alter some parts of the draft after speaking to some of the clinic faculty in Chacraseca and members of FNE who thought it would be a better idea and more useful to construct the database for the general patient population of León and Chacraseca. After I completed the final draft of the resource assessment, it took about a week and a half before it was approved by FNE. At that point, I was already halfway through my time in Nicaragua, so I had to start collecting surveys right away. My goal was to get at least 50 completed- 1 assessment per family- before I left.

This undertaking had its own challenges. I was doing the assessments with Josue, the coordinator of Salud Para Todos los Niños and a professor at the medical school in León. He worked at different medical facilities in the local area (pretty much where he’s needed), so he was a familiar face among patients both in the clinic in Chacraseca, as well as the clinic and hospital in León. During the first two weeks of doing the assessments, we were completing them at a rate of one family per day, which was frustratingly slow. This was due to a variety of reasons that were out of our control. First, the lack of reliable transportation meant that we often had to rely on our own two feet to get us to each house. So, each day, we walked from house to house, with a couple miles in between each. But usually, we would only be able to get to one to three in a day before the rain would start pouring. The rain  would continue for another two hours until it got dark, at which point Josue and I would have to stop for the day. These house visits were done in León. In Chacraseca, I was able to get more assessments done since everyone congregated at the clinic. So, it was much quicker than the house visits in León, but not that much quicker. So far, what we had been doing was going through the entire assessment with each family individually, reading each question and writing down the answers they tell us. At that point, I only had 7 assessments completed and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get the bare minimum to have substantial information about the community’s needs. So, I wanted a try another method to see if I could get more done in less time. I decided to distribute a mass of assessments to each family at the clinic while they were waiting to be seen by the doctor. I thought this would go much more smoothly, but of course it didn’t. Jose, another Nicaraguan local who worked with FNE, told me that literacy rates in Chacraseca were much lower, so I expected to run into that issue. For those families, we reserved extra time to help them complete the assessments. As I started to collect the surveys from families who had completed it themselves, I noticed that several of them had left many questions unanswered, which Jose and I had to go back and fix. Incomplete assessments would be categorized as invalid. So after that, I realized that it was probably just better to sit down with each family and do the assessment with them to avoid any confusion and misunderstanding, and also to ensure they were completed thoroughly. Yes, it would take more time and I would probably not get as many assessments as I had hoped for, but I really didn’t want to sacrifice the quality of the project due to the time constraint.

There were several other obstacles, but long story short, we were able to collect a total of 60 assessments thanks to several FNE volunteers and lots of creative problem-solving. That was 10 more than I had planned, which I was very happy about. The only drawback is that I didn’t have enough time to compile all the information for FNE while I was in Nicaragua. But thankfully, there’s the internet. So, I took all the assessments back home with me and will be compiling all the information here before sending it off to FNE, who will share the information with the rest of the community and continue to build off of it. 

      Field Picture 6: Research team at Centro de Investigacion en Demografia y

      Salud- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, León (plus Dr. Herrera

            taking the picture)

Field Picture 7: Boys take turns at the water pump to get buckets of clean water for their homes

Field Picture 8: Daily transportation from Leon to Chacraseca

Field Picture 9: Ready for a good day at the clinic

Field Picture 10: Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Nicaragua, School of Medicine

Field Picture 11: View from the top of the south side of Central Park in Leon