OXFORD, Miss. – With a little luck and a lot of determination, a
University of Mississippi honors student has developed a program that
promises to spark her interest in community health for the rest of her
life.
Kaitlin Gilham, a senior biology major in the Sally
McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, single-handedly organized “Como
Cuidar su Corazón,” a heart-health program for Hispanics in the Oxford
community.
“I wanted to improve the lack of health information
and the lack of access to health care for the Hispanic population,”
Gilham said.
The seven-week program was part of Gilham’s thesis for the Honors College. Its purpose was to inform local Hispanics about healthy lifestyle decisions and provide heart-health information. The program ran Friday evenings June 6 through July 18 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
Gilham first knew that she wanted to develop this program after attending “Search Your Heart,” an American Heart Association program that gives heart-health information to black and Hispanic communities. Gilham knew that she wanted to do something similar in her own community.
She contacted the Oxford Medical Ministries Clinic, which informed her of the numerous requirements necessary to become a patient at the clinic. Many people are not eligible for treatment at OMMC, including many Hispanics. Therefore, she decided to target the Hispanic community for her project.
“Health care is available for many Hispanics, however the cost is outrageous,” Gilham said.
Gilham also asked for help from UM faculty member Penny Sisson, Spanish instructor and a deacon at St. Peter’s. St. Peter’s has had a Hispanic Ministry for the past 10 years, so Sisson was particularly interested in this kind of offering for the Hispanic community.
“I offered our facility at St. Peter’s to her as the location for the program, and I helped her by giving her the names of health care professionals in the community who I thought would be interested in helping with the program. I also helped her with ideas of where to recruit participants. Then I attended all but one of the sessions to lend support and to represent St. Peter’s at the church,” Sisson said.
Lack of funding was an issue from the beginning. “A big obstacle I had to overcome was how I was going to be able to finance this,” Gilham said. “I wanted to do it bad enough that I would have paid out-of-pocket for it. I don’t have the money, but I would have taken up a job.”
Gilham’s first attempt at gaining funds the program was when she applied for a Barksdale grant of $5,000. The committee turned her down because they didn’t think she could accomplish such a task. “That lit a fire under me,” Gilham said, “I knew I would have to pull it off.”
Her next step was to write letters to every physician she had ever contacted. The letters asked for donations of equipment and materials to the program. Of 20 letters sent, only five responded.
Luckily, one of the responses came from Dr. James Guyton and his family, who donated a generous amount of money to Gilham’s program. Three other physicians donated the use of a blood pressure machine and scales and made monetary contributions. The Baptist Memorial Hospital of North Mississippi also made a monetary contribution.
Additionally, Gilham applied for a fellowship with the Honors College. After filling out more applications, she was awarded the fellowship to go toward her program.
Now that she had enough money, Gilham had to work on putting together the program itself. Kathy Knight, UM associate professor of family and consumer sciences, volunteered to talk about nutrition at one of the sessions and make a healthy version of a traditional Hispanic meal.
“I did the program one night on healthy cooking and low-fat, low-salt cooking,” Knight said. “I gave general tips in my talk that I would give anybody, and then for the meal, I picked two traditional dishes: tamales and chicken enchiladas.”
Gilham also recruited various volunteers who came to the program to speak and offer different ways to stay healthy through exercise. The volunteers taught participants yoga, resistance training with water bottles and even salsa dancing.
Another amazing example of the hard work Gilham put into this program is that she gave all her lectures in Spanish. Along with having a volunteer student translator, Gilham said this was the perfect opportunity to work on her Spanish.
Overall, Gilham had 16 local Hispanics attend her program. Eight of them attended regularly. “It’s hard to maintain attendance at any ongoing program,” Knight said, “For (Gilham) to be able to sustain the energy week after week is a testament to both her organizational skills and to the quality of the program.”
“I thought the program was excellent overall,” Sisson said, “A number of health care professionals from the community were involved and volunteered their time and expertise. I believe that the program will have very positive lasting effects on the people who participated.”
After earning a master’s degree in public health and a medical degree, Gilham plans on coordinating more community programs for other areas of Mississppi.
One of the most rewarding experiences for Gilham came at the end of the program.
“One of the participants came up to me and thanked me,” Gilham said. “She said her refrigerator had healthier things in it; she is cooking healthier for her family, and she will try to keep doing this. It was touching. Just her coming up to me and saying that made the whole program and all the work I had done worth it.”