I don’t think it really hit me that I’m going to Brazil until I was on the flight. Yes, I had known since March, but the thought of conducting global health research at a world-class cancer hospital still seems surreal. I am a long way from my goal of becoming a medical professional, yet I was given this opportunity to work alongside incredibly passionate medical professionals in a beautiful facility; I still feel like I’m dreaming.

Quick background info: Hospital de Cancer de Barretos costs approximately $11 million to run every single year. About $1.2 million of that is given by the government of Brazil. The remaining $9.8 is made up of entirely donations. It is because of the government and generous contributions from people that this hospital is able to stay open and serve its citizens completely free of charge.

I really had a chance to think on the flight to Brazil, but ten hours was still not enough to completely formulate and sort through all my thoughts. I thought about…

• My goals for this trip and what I hope to accomplish: My personal goal is to make the most of this trip – cliché, I know, but how often will I get the chance to spend two months in a new country being mentored by phenomenal professionals, gaining experience working in a different culture, and grasping the healthcare issues faced by the communities here? My professional goals include getting valuable feedback on the technologies that Elisa and I have helped create at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK). We are taking the following five technologies: an ostomy bag, ostomy training model, insulin dosing device, a retinopathy kit, and a breast cancer training model. We will also be taking on a few projects at the hospital ourselves that we will have the opportunity to work on over the next two months. Additionally, we will be doing a lot of needs findings to determine what problems exist in the hospital and how Rice360 can help solve them.
• What I hope to contribute and leave behind in Barretos: I hope the work that Elisa and I do over the course of these two months is valuable and beneficial to the hospital.
• How I would like this trip to shape who I am: Immersing myself in an absolutely foreign – yet captivating, nonetheless – culture, will be quite challenging at first, but over time, it will get easier, and I hope it will positively impact the way I approach challenges similar to this one in the future. There are so many new things to try, and I can only hope that two months is enough time to try most of them.
• Who/what inspired me to take an interest in global health: I have been interested in global health since my senior year of high school when I watched Don’t Panic – End Poverty, a talk by Hans Rosling, the founder of Gapminder. The manner in which Hans Rosling presented the global health data evoked a sense of urgency to determine the underlying causes for the problems that exist in global health. After hearing his talk, I took time to explore Gapminder, a tool that allows you to determine the relationship between two variables. For example, on Gapminder, you are able to track the correlation between obesity rates (variable #1) and diabetes rates (variable #2) in a particular country for the last sixty years. Though correlation does not imply causation, through this incredibly valuable tool, I was pushed to consider things that I would not have otherwise considered. My interest in global health motivated me to pursue a Global Health Technologies (GLHT) minor at Rice. While taking GLHT 201 and GLHT 360, I was given the opportunity to funnel my passion into a project and slowly begin making an impact.

The thoughts I have mentioned above are only a snippet of everything I thought about on the flight to Brazil, but they very well encapsulate how I feel about this trip and have really allowed me to define what this trip is going to mean for me.

PSA: *cultural shock* In Brazil, people usually greet each other by giving each other a hug and a kiss on the cheek simultaneously simply to show their affection. Try not to look like a deer in headlights like I did when it first happened to me (classic Shravya).

Anyway, to end my first blog post, here’s a picture of the gorgeous sunset from the rooftop of our apartment building the day we arrived to Barretos: