Jessica Birthisel | May 17, 2010
 |
| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Fran Quigley, left, talked to associate professor Jim Kelly’s class Friday. Quigley is director of operations for the IU-Kenya Partnership. Students leave for Kenya this week. |
In the meantime, Kelly has arranged for daily guest speakers to visit the class, preparing students for international travel, acquainting student with HIV/AIDS facts and statistics, and providing background information about Indiana University with Kenya.
The most recent guest was Fran Quigley, director of operations for the IU-Kenya Partnership, who spoke to the class on Friday.
Quigley’s book, Walking Together, Walking Far: How a U.S. and African Medical School Partnership is Winning the Fight Against HIV/AIDS, is a required text for the course. It explores the partnership between the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Moi University School of Medicine in Kenya, particularly in terms of the partnership’s successful efforts in controlling HIV/AIDS.
In their travels to Kenya, students will work alongside Moi University students to create multimedia news projects about the IU-Kenya Partnership’s cornerstone program, AMPATH (the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare), which, according to Kelly, treats 100,000 HIV-positive patients at 23 sites in urban and rural Kenya.
Quigley assured students their welcome they’d be in the region.
 |
| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Brittney Elkins listened as Quigley explained some of the work the students will observe. “Everybody connected with the program is so excited for you all to come,” Quigley told them. |
Quigley explained that since his book was published, the AMPATH program, once devoted primarily to the treatment of HIV/AIDS, is now “bigger and broader.” Part of this change is a growing emphasis on providing primary care to the people of Kenya.
He explained that “the program continues to be hugely about HIV,” adding that the HIV/AIDS portion of the program has grown even since the book was published.
One growing part of the program, and a portion Quigley anticipates that the IU students will experience first-hand as part of their reporting in Kenya, is the home-based counseling and testing initiative which positions health care providers directly in the homes of Kenyans for on-the-spot HIV/AIDS blood testing.
In the 15 minutes it takes to get test results, health care providers provide counseling, said Quigley, and in the event that a test comes back positive, the providers can use personal digital assistants (PDAs) to enroll the infected person into a treatment program.
Drawing on his background as a lawyer and law professor, Quigley updated the students on the legal work being done in the region, again as a collaboration between Moi and Indiana Universities. The Legal Aid Center of Eldaret (LACE) helps represent HIV positive patients, many of whom are women.
The social repercussions of the epidemic will become apparent as students report on the issue, said Quigley.
“The [Kenyan] law on paper looks great,” said Quigley. “Of course, if you’re a poor, landless, mother of three in Kenya and have no access to a lawyer, the laws don’t do you any good.”
Quigley also took some time to explain AMPATH’s tripartite mission: to provide care, to provide training, and to provide research, in that order.
“Care leads the way,” said Quigley, something he says sets the program apart from other research-dominant initiatives. “The doctors believe, ‘If someone’s in front of me, and sick, I need to care for them.’” This, he says, is the key to the program’s success.
Quigley then opened up the floor for student questions, with topics ranging from the size and geographic reach of the home-based treatment and counseling program, LACE’s work with Kenyan children, the lasting affects of post-election politics in the region, the use of medical records in the organization, the impact of religious beliefs and traditions on the services and advice about writing on the topic of AMPATH.
Regarding the last question, Quigley assured the students that finding material for their reporting projects would not be difficult.
“There are more stories than you can fill your notebooks with,” said Quigley. “The people you’ll come across are natural storytellers. And their stories are incredibly moving.”
 |
| Photo by Jessica Birthisel |
| Associate professor Jim Kelly has traveled to Kenya several times to conduct reporting workshops for professionals. Now, his students will report from Africa. |
“These guest speakers are all coming here because they want you to be a success over there,” Kelly told the students after Quigley’s visit.
Kelly has organized workshops for professional journalists in India, Sri Lanka and Nairobi to help them navigate through government sources and other types of information. This is the first trip the School of Journalism has sponsored to Kenya for this kind of work.
The students depart at the end of the week, stopping overnight in Nairobi before arriving in Eldoret. Following two weeks of reporting in the region, they’ll visit Lake Nakuru as well as major media and sightseeing venues in Nairobi before returning home mid-June.
A course blog, including individual contributions from participating students (and eventually their actual reporting projects from the course), is online.
Questions? Comments? Email the Web editor.
