2007-08 Student Recognition Award
Kirsten “Kiki” Austad, a student from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was honored with the CIEE Student Recognition Award for 2007-08 at the CIEE Annual Conference in Nashville, TN.
During her time on the CIEE Santiago Service-Learning program, Kirsten Austad worked with Hospital Juan XXIII, a public hospital that serves the marginalized communities of La Zona Sur. Kirsten worked closely with six women promotoras de salud (health promoters), who volunteer their time to do health education and screening activities in the community. The overwhelming message was that they wanted to learn more about chronic diseases that plague the community and provide a more concrete service to community members. The consensus was to investigate hypertension in the community, including prevalence, risk factors, and community knowledge and attitude toward this disease. Over the course of one month, Kirsten and her health promoters conducted over 150 interviews with both hypertensives and non-hypertensives. Based on their findings, Kirsten and her colleagues jointly designed an education program to address the problem of hypertension in the community.
According to Resident Director Elaine Acacio, “what stands out about Kirsten’s work was that she took time to collaborate deeply with the local health promoters as opposed to creating a stand-alone project that is logistically easier for the student, but not necessarily sustainable after the student has left the country nor empowering to the community. I recently visited the community and they are reporting an astounding drop in hypertensives and are continuing to engage the community vis-á-vis activities—organized caminatas (walking marathons) and a club for hypertensives—to promote healthy living.”