Revival

I'm bringing back my blog. The title will probably have to change, but it's still going to be about the same country!

If I haven't talked you about it yet, here's the quick update: I'm planning to go back to Vietnam! I'm working on putting together a research project in Sapa - one of the regions I visited during my last trip - for my summer internship that's coming up.

I've laid the groundwork. I've talked to a couple of professors, found a contact person in the area, and written a first version of my grant proposal. Things I still need to figure out include 1) the appropriate approvals from local authorities (as well as the Yale IRB folks), 2) translation services (there is no way I can learn H'mong in 4 months), and 3) where I'll stay. The third point is not one I'm concerned about at all. I know the area a little, and I can get a room at a hotel, if nothing else, for $10 a day. Gotta love Vietnam.

I got really interested in the area during my visit last summer. It's absolutely GORgeous and there's a lot of interesting culture from the local ethnic minorities. During that trip, you may recall, I spent 2 days/1 night on a hike out to a local village where I stayed the night in the house of our guide, a 29 year old H'mong woman, and her family. I was struck by their meager means. Dirt floors, one large room, animals wandering in and out, no running water, no toilet facilities. I made a logical assumption, especially after hearing about how her husband was having some trouble with illness and hearing him cough, that the healthcare situation probably wasn't very good in the area.

Shu and her daughter, my inspiration. (I have this image as my desktop background to serve as a constant reminder of my goal)

After that weekend trip, I started reading a book given to me by a former coworker, Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is a quintessential book for healthcare professionals, about Paul Farmer, who with the help of some friends, started Partners in Health. They started in Haiti and have since expanded to several locations around the globe, but with one essential goal: treat people who need treatment and won't get it otherwise. It's a very inspiring book that sadly took me months to finish (mostly because I started in August and haven't had time for it again until now), but it started giving me ideas while I was reading the first chapter.

So with ideas from that book buzzing around inside of my head and my heart back in Sapa, I started thinking about my summer internship requirement. I thought at first that I wanted to go to South America somewhere, but that quickly changed. During the first week of school I met a professor here named Robert Heimer, who has been working with a group in Hanoi on an evaluation of the efficacy of a risk-reduction program for injection drug users (IDUs) in the capital city. I thought I might join in on some aspect of that project, but it quickly became clear that a) that wasn't really what I was interested in and b) most of that work would be over before the summer. So I started designing my own research proposal.

I've kind of done this before, but on a much smaller scale. In college I took a psychology research class in which I designed and carried out a research proposal with another student, finding survey measures, going through IRB approval, and doing all of the analysis after... but I had so much more help, it was happening locally, and I had a partner to do the whole project with. MUCH simpler.

So now I'm trying to dig up everything I learned in that class and apply it to a very different project, and largely on my own. BUT IT'S HAPPENING. Every little milestone that I hit makes me do a happy dance. It's sometimes very discouraging. For example, this past week as I've been trying to prepare my first complete draft of my Downs proposal (one of the funding sources I'm trying to get), neither my Yale advisor nor my Vietnamese preceptor were available to field any questions. So I spent A LOT of time thinking about exactly which questions I should ask them when they are available, and I have a huge list.

But I think it will work out. I'm a little worried about the translation services aspect, but I've read enough papers about other work done by US students visiting Vietnam that I'm convinced it's possible. I just have to keep looking. And the real icing on the cake for all of this is that the exact project I want to do was suggested as a "future considerations" research point in a report published by the UNODC about that area and specifically about the H'mong population. So as long as I get all the details figured out, I think I'm set :)

I'm planning to use this blog over the course of the semester to document the challenges of designing my own research project, and after I get there, to write about the very different cultural experience I expect to have there and how the research process itself goes along. Next up... "Consultations with Downs Committee members"... stay tuned!

Tam biet!