Field visit 3: Karambayam

Yesterday yielded an interesting yet somewhat frustrating day in the field, in a small village known as Karambayam. As our groups further defines our projects, looking at determinants of disease and brainstorming potential ways to address them within the local context, we sought answers about what daily life is like in the villages we're visiting. This approach has inherent limitations, given that we're only here a short amount of time, our field visits are a few hours a day, and we have a very limited knowledge of the language, making communication challenging. We were fortunate enough to have a brief encounter with the SughaVazhvu guides- women living within Karambayam selected and trained to conduct household visits and assist people in accessing medical care. Although we had only a brief time to visit with them, we learned about some of the main concerns facing people in Karambayam (hypertension being one that my CVD team took note of), and how people view community health workers. It seems that these women are viewed positively and trusted within the community, improving the likelihood that people will get accurate information about their illnesses and seek help at the rural micro-health center. That being said, many key issues still exist in the community, such as high rates of tobacco and alcohol use (mostly among men) and limited physical activity, especially for women who are confined to home a lot of the time. There are overwhelming factors that contribute to heart disease, similar to those that exist in the U.S., but often more complicated by poverty and lack of knowledge about how behavior impacts health. It will definitely be challenging one specific area to focus on for our proposed intervention. Hopefully future field visits will provide more insight into how we can provide something useful and appropriate for the context.

Research aside, it was nice to be able to visit with people in the village- everyone was very welcoming and curious about us. I'm looking forward to meeting more people and spending more time in one of the villages, although we're not yet sure which area we want to focus on.