REU Site: Globalization and Community Health: Combining Social Science and Engineering

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The REU Site "Globalization and Community Health: Combining Social Science and Engineering" provides undergraduate students with intensive interdisciplinary methodological and ethics training, mentorship, and practical experience in the conduct of community-based health research that brings together social sciences and civil and environmental engineering (CEE). The program is conducted in Monteverde, Costa Rica, a region that is undergoing rapid changes associated with globalization in general, and tourism specifically, and where the PI-team has worked for the past ten years in close association with the Monteverde Institute and a variety of local stakeholders. Each year the program involves 10 undergraduate students from CEE, medical anthropology, public health, and other health-related fields. Intellectual merit: The program is unique in bringing together medical anthropology and CEE, two disciplines that have, for the most part, been isolated from each other, but that can be combined effectively to address issues of community health in a culturally appropriate and sustainable way. The program also fosters critical thinking skills and community engagement among participants, and contributes to the scientific understanding of the impact of globalization and tourism on the health of rural communities. The program combines six weeks of interdisciplinary methods training with four weeks of research on health-related issues that have already been identified by local communities and that can be approached from an interdisciplinary perspective. Two such projects are 1. the involvement of the local community in the identification of potential sources of drinking water contamination and the treatment of polluted water through BioSand filters (BSF) that remove turbidity, natural organic matter and pathogens from drinking water in households that obtain their water from sources other than the national aqueduct (e.g., rivers and springs) and 2. the establishment of key hole gardens and other forms of sustainable food production at the household and community levels, to respond to the rising problem of food insecurity and associated health impacts such as increases in overweight and obesity in adults and children.Broader impacts: This project contributes to NSF's efforts to increase research capacity among undergraduate students. It provides students with valuable interdisciplinary hands-on experience useful for future graduate studies addressing global issues from multiple perspectives. In order to contextualize their training and research, students first become familiarized with the historical and present political, socio-economic, and environmental conditions of the host communities, with the main health related issues that affect the population, and with the local health care system. Students carry out their research in small teams under the guidance of faculty members and graduate mentors from the University of South Florida departments of Anthropology and CEE. In addition, each team works closely with community advisors (i.e., local residents with expertise in the issues to be addressed) to ensure that the research is culturally appropriate and responsive to local needs and desires. The students present the results of their research to community members and to the collaborating institutions. The program also includes a community health fair during which students collect a variety of data related to physical health, environmental conditions, demographics, etc., conduct water testing, take basic nutritional anthropometry measures (e.g., stature, weight, skinfolds), perform simple tests such as blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol, and provide health education.The site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.This site is also co-funded by the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering via its Global Venture Fund.