Meet Ms. Dollar
Christina Dollar, a clinical research assistant in Orthopaedics at Children’s National, has long been interested in working globally. She began her international experience volunteering for the Peace Corps from September 2014 to November 2016 in Mozambique. Her primary role was teaching biology in a secondary school, however, interested in healthcare as well, Ms. Dollar became involved in various health projects while there. She coordinated the southern region JUNTOS groups, a Peace Corps run organization utilizing cultural expression to increase HIV/AIDS awareness amongst teens and their communities. As regional coordinator, she provided support to 31 groups in the South, organized training conferences for new group leaders, managed an annual workshop with 96 participants, and reconstructed the organization’s curriculum for the use of JUNTOS groups nationwide. In addition, she designed and oversaw a program for a “Health Day” at a secondary school in Inhambane, with over 400 participants. At the secondary school where she focused her teaching efforts, she organized and led various after-school programs including an English Theatre Group, a Science Club, a “Meninas” Girls Empowerment Group, and a Cultural Club, many of which promoted discussions of topics such as HIV/AIDS awareness, leadership, gender equality, and other local community issues.
While in Mozambique, Ms. Dollar perceived a significant lack of healthcare access and education: “people did not have access to or knowledge about very basic health related things which we take for granted,” she describes. As a result of the lasting and “ubiquitous” presence of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria, Ms. Dollar observed that many people, despite the remarkable stoicism of the community, were resigning themselves to accepting the reality of these diseases and their significant impacts. One way to combat this sentiment was to provide education about health care, but in a situation where there is no consistent access to medical providers and little to no access to medications, Ms. Dollar found herself ruminating on the extreme need for medical assistance. “The fact is, health issues pervaded everyday life so fully,” she recalls, but without access to medical care, “if anything happened, it was very scary. While I was there, I had several students who died.”
In her role as regional coordinator, Ms. Dollar provided group leadership and mentorship, rotating between the different regional JUNTOS groups. Ms. Dollar helped her students utilize their own self-expression to talk about mental health, physical health, and well-being, giving them a platform through which they could discuss with peers what they were going through. Projects like “a skit about malaria, or a poem about domestic violence” helped the students explore these issues in an engaging and collaborative format. “The program is about is giving youth and young adult leaders education and tools to share with their peers and to implement change within their communities,” adds Ms. Dollar. Additionally, the program was a crucial outlet for these teens, who were otherwise without the opportunity to discuss important, and frequently very personal, issues with their peers. It effectively provided a venue for mental health discussions and helped to ameliorate the “huge need” for mental health care in lieu of clinical access.
“For the kids I taught, that was a pretty rare experience,” she adds, “there weren’t many clubs in school, there weren’t many parents involved. Additional enrichment and support is very difficult as the school has very limited resources and teachers were only there for a short amount of time.” While the work Ms. Dollar was able to provide was instrumental in organizing the different regional groups and facilitating their communication, the goal was really to make the project as sustainable as possible, and that required local leaders. “At many places in the country, JUNTOS groups are lead by Mozambicans,” she says, “and those are definitely the most sustainable ventures. I was in charge of my group and had a larger voice among the other regional groups, but really the most successful and sustainable groups are those run by locals.”
Reflecting on the experience, Ms. Dollar says, “the Peace Corps really put global health on my radar.” “I went over there to be an educator and gain some perspective and experience, and then to have global health be such a strong take away even though I was not a health volunteer,” was very impactful for her, and has served to inspire her “intense interest” in global health. At the moment, Ms. Dollar is considering how to merge her clinical and research inclinations with work in international development. Her time in the Peace Corps provided her on-the-ground experience and informed her “intense interest” in Global Health. At Children’s, Ms. Dollar looks forward to further informational and training opportunities facilitated by GHI, which she has found to be “both very educational and affirming.” “Global Health is definitely a direction I am very interested in pursuing,” she adds, and is hopeful that as a member of GHI, she will be able to “continue to gain exposure to this very vast field in order to more precisely delineate my future goals for working in global health.”