By JR Hodges | Communications Director
We hope that you will include Wuqu' Kawoq in your Giving Tuesday plans!
Why us?
We are making progress every day toward greater health equity by delivering high-quality care in our patients' Mayan languages, homes, and communities.
Why does this matter?
In recent years, Covid-19, climate change, rising costs, and migration have revealed our interconnections as a global community and demonstrated the importance of ensuring that everyone has the best possible chance for health and well-being. We are dedicated to transforming health care in Guatemala to make this vision a reality. To get a sense of our approach, consider this reflection from Patrick Liu, a medical resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Boston Children’s Hospital/Boston Medical Center who recently spent time in the field with our team.
My parents are immigrants from small communities in Taiwan and thus much more accustomed to traditional Chinese medicine, and so experiencing the Western medicine-based healthcare system was a very jarring experience for them. I served as an interpreter (in terms of both language and culture) for my parents while growing up, including in healthcare settings, and I could always feel that they were much more comfortable with obtaining medical care in Taiwan, in their native language and community.
Seeing that juxtaposition in their comfort level was a powerful motivator for my aspirations to become a primary care physician in rural and/or global settings. I am an Internal Medicine-Pediatrics resident now and had the wonderful opportunity to spend one month in Guatemala, of which two weeks were spent with Wuqu' Kawoq in Tecpán. There, I experienced firsthand the tremendous impact that a home-based, language-concordant, community-centered program can have on a population's trust in the healthcare system and the community's understanding of medical conditions.
There is no way to adequately describe the strength of connection without seeing it in-person. I thought often of my parents and how they would have benefited tremendously from a program like Wuqu' Kawoq. I simply cannot wait to return to Guatemala and am so grateful to Wuqu' Kawoq for giving me an experience of a model of care and a community that felt like a second home to me.
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