China healthcare internship opportunity: California China Healthcare Watch

One of my co-panelists at this past weekend’s Intercollegiate US-China Healthcare Conference at Wharton Business School, was Roy Y. Chan, the Program Coordinator at China California Heart Watch (CCHW), a non-profit organization. The organization’s mission is “to provide clinical care, research, and public service in the rural Yunnan Province of China.”

For those unfamiliar, Yunnan is one of China’s poorest provinces and was the outbreak point of China’s AIDS/HIV epidemic in the 1980s, thought to be directly attributable to the high prevalence of intravenous drug users in the Province relative to other areas  of China.

Mr. Chan noted that CCHW has couple of facilities in Yunnan province, a 1200 sq ft clinic and an 800 sq ft community center, from which it operates a research and public service program for Yunnan residents. The public service efforts are carried out in improvised clinics in various villages, and staffed by students from the United States, under the leadership of Dr. Robert C. Detrano, MD, PhD from the University of California Irvine.  While the intent of the clinics is to monitor the blood pressure of villagers otherwise hard pressed to get medical care, the students and CCHW doctors (there are other doctors besides Dr. Detrano) often turn into more. From the CCHW website;

The regions of Yunnan in which China Cal operates are some of the poorest in both China and the world. Quite often, when our China Cal teams enter a rural village, it represents the first time in years that any kind of fully trained medical professional has visited the area. While our focus is on heart disease and high blood pressure, we often face long lines of patients with a multitude of ailments, many of which are chronic and have been untreated for years. We do our best to offer diagnoses and treatment to all comers, and your donations will help us fill out our staff with trained doctors and nurses who are better able to accommodate those who come to China Cal teams with non cardiac related health emergencies.

A parallel mission of CCHW is to offer training to rural village doctors. Village doctors are almost exclusively doctors who do not have the formal medical training that would make them the equivalent of a bachelorate degree holder. In the words of CCHW;

Though the number of village doctors is sufficient, they remain poorly trained in the care of chronic diseases like hypertension and heart disease.  Village doctors undergo from 3 months to two years of training after high school.  They do a valiant job of serving their communities, but they are often under-trained to meet the needs of their patients with chronic conditions.   China Cal hosts training seminars every year for village doctors to expand their knowledge of diagnosis and treatment of high blood pressure, which is  becoming an epidemic in rural China.   At these training seminars, village doctors are taught how to screen for and measure blood pressure, how to treat their patients with life style modification and medications and how to recognize and treat the complications of high blood pressure like heart attack and stroke.  These doctors are able to return to their villages better equipped to serve their communities.

For students in the US CCHW presents an exciting opportunity because of its internship programs, a total of five this coming summer. The internship, according to a CCHW pamphlet I was given by Mr. Chan, “involves first-hand experience of the growing medical and public health problems – particularly cardiovascular disease – in rural China where access to quality medical services is limited.” Information about the internships, including application and payment requirements can be found on the CCHW website here. The only hard requirement appears to be “some interest in international public health or healthcare work in underserved populations.”

I encourage those of you with an interest in China’s healthcare development to at least give CCHW’s internship program a strong look. And if you end up going let us know because we’d love to have you write for us.

I’ll be posting reflections from the conference throughout the week so check back often.