After months of planning, preparing, dreaming, and questioning, we are just a few days away from flying to the Dominican Republic as the first International Program Directors for Health Horizons International.  Our focus will be on developing community-based research and health promotion efforts in coordination with HHI’s medical service trips, but we anticipate that the next ten months will lead us down many unexpected paths as well.  From delivering medical care, to promoting community health in its broader contexts, to beginning our work with fully open minds, we come to our blog’s title — Medicine and Beyond.

While our internet access in Villa Ascencion will be limited, we hope to update this blog at least once a week with our challenges, successes, stories, thoughts, and progress.  We’d like to give a gigantic thank you to Mary Frances Czarsty for her hard work in designing and setting this blog up for us, and also to RJ Sherman for his help and patience with our technical questions.  Keep us bookmarked, and stay in touch as we get off the ground — we always welcome feedback, comments, questions, and ideas!  You can also subscribe to our RSS feed or have new posts emailed to you automatically.

In the meantime, please check out the pages above for more information about our background with Health Horizons International and our plans for our time in the Dominican Republic.  For a more detailed description of our project’s development, click on the sidebar link to DoSomething.org.  You can also learn more about our partner organization, Crossroads, and HHI itself by clicking on the links.

We had our final Board of Directors meeting yesterday in Connecticut, so now we’re seeing friends and family, packing, finalizing logistics and tying up loose ends in the States… then flying out on October 1st.  Hasta pronto!

~Laura and Angi