Santa Lucia, Honduras - Background

International medicine has been a desire of mine since college, however things never seemed to come together for me to go. Now, a plane ticket to Honduras has my name on it for April 12th, less than a month away. I will be joining a group of medical students, resident physicians, and faculty physicians from family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics. It is with a renewed excitement that I try to picture practicing medicine in a radically different setting, Santa Lucia, Honduras.


The organization that I will be working with is called Shoulder to Shoulder. More information is on their website at shouldertoshoulder.org. An excerpt from the website includes:


“Shoulder to Shoulder is a private, non-profit, non-governmental organization formed in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1996. It began providing health care services in western Intibuca in 1990, six years prior to its official incorporation. In the spirit of local empowerment, Shoulder to Shoulder worked with local community leaders in Santa Lucia to form Hombro a Hombro, a grassroots community-based, non-profit NGO (non-governmental organization) registered in Honduras since 1996. Shoulder to Shoulder and Hombro a Hombro work in tandem to achieve a single mission: to develop educational and health programs to help poor rural communities in Honduras achieve sustainable development and improve the overall health and well being of its residents. We seek to address the health, education, economic, and social needs of isolated communities in the Western Intibuca region.


The three missions of Shoulder to Shoulder are:
1. To provide medical and dental care, nutrition services and community development for poor communities in rural Honduras.
2. To provide faculty supervised experiences for health care providers in an international setting that enhances skills in community health, tropical medicine, cross cultural medicine and working in resource poor environments.
3. To provide a setting for reflection and personal growth through service.”