Foundations of Health and Development
7
A seminar exploring questions in medical missions…
This workshop will bring together scientific and biblical principles of health and agriculture, cross-cultural methods of communication, and skills in establishing relationships that facilitate behavioral changes for the improvement of health, nutrition, and care for the environment.
First session: July 3-August 29 2012, The application deadline has passes. Other dates to be offered in the future.
Typical day: Half day spent in discussion-style seminars, half day in community health outreach.
Faculty: Dan Fountain MD, Ty Hopkins MD, others TBA
Course Objectives:
- Discuss basic principles of community health.
- Identify obstacles to changing health-related behavior.
- Describe the dynamics of culture and how cultures function.
- List cultural values that favor progress and health and others that impede them.
- List and describe biblical and cultural foundations for community health.
- Describe principles and practical applications of cross-cultural communication.
- Outline worldview assumptions and values of traditional, Islamic and Western cultures.
- Describe principles and methods of participatory non-formal adult education.
- List principles of planning, organizing, and financing health programs.
- Describe principles of motivating and empowering community leaders in health and development activities.
- Describe the process of decentralizing primary health care to make it accessible to everyone.
- Describe the organization of pre-school , antenatal, and family health consultations, the enlarged program of vaccinations, and nutrition services
- Describe effective no-cost methods of restoring soil fertility and restoration of forests.
Location/Facility: This seminar will take place in Ntagatcha, Tanzania, 45 miles east of Lake Victoria, near the Kenyan border. This small, rural village is rich in natural resources but poorly developed. Before City of Hope, education and healthcare were the worst in Tanzania, and to date, there is no electricity, poor sanitation and poor roads. City of hope has built a school and a small hospital which are already raising the standard of education and healthcare.
Students will stay in simple but comfortable dorm style housing and meals will be shared as a community.
Contact/questions: tyhopkins@gmail.com
Faculty Bios
Dan Fountain, MD, MPH
Dr. Dan Fountain spent 35 years as a medical missionary in the Vanga Hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire). In partnership with the Congolese healthcare staff, he helped develop a comprehensive health service consisting of a 400 bed multi-specialty training hospital, training programs for diploma and auxiliary paramedical personnel, a rural health zone with a decentralized network of 50 rural health centers bringing primary health care to 250,000 people in 300 communities, community health initiatives throughout the health zone, a family medicine residency training program, and a wholistic approach to caring for the whole person with special adaptations for caring for persons with HIV/AIDS.
Since 1996, Dr. Fountain has taught whole person care and community health in various countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He facilitates workshops to train health professionals serving the poor domestically and internationally. He is on the overseas faculty of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and on the board of Project MedSend. He has written several books in French and English for primary health care personnel, and books on the biblical basis for health and healing.
Ty Hopkins, MD
Dr. Ty Hopkins has been training and mentoring future medical missionaries since completing his residency in Family Practice at Eastern Maine Medical Center in 2003. After residency he volunteered full time as medical director for organizations working in various mission fields including prisons, disaster relief, academia, families in crisis, and several locations in Latin America and Africa. He is currently the medical director at City of Hope doing wholistic transformational development in Tanzania. Dr. Hopkins is passionate about integrating a biblical understanding of health and personhood with medicine and is mentoring medical students through the Christian Medical and Dental Association. He is on the faculty of the Via College of Osteopathic Medicine and Campbell University where he directs clinical preceptorships in global health as well as lectures on ethics, medical humanities, and cross cultural healthcare ministry. He is married and has two children.
Great job for the Post!
I can not recommend this enough! This program is a fantastic opportunity to learn to think outside the box. You will learn to think about medicine in ways you never have before. It was wonderful to see so many people with a desire to approach healthcare and other areas of life in new ways. I was encouraged and equipped for new directions in life.
Jennifer Ward RN
Blacksburg VA
I participated in this course in 2010 and still to this day, the best mission training I have received. It opened my eyes to how missions should be carried out and how the Bible provides so many instructions on health and medicine. A truly Biblical approach to the mission field, and I learned a lot from experienced missionaries devoted to Christ. An excellent course for anyone in the interested in missions as well as the medical field- nurses, doctors, PA’s.
Rebecca Ramsey, RN, BSN
This program helped shape my perspective on missions and evangelism more than any teaching before or since. The foundation of health is the Word of God and his Church. All the answers are there, and this program helps make those Biblical solutions our tools.
I have participated in this course for the last two years, and I truly wish that every Christian health professional could take it. Few things had more influence on my understanding of the juxtaposition of medicine, Christianity, theology, and missiology than this course. Learning from so many who love Christ so well has had a tremendous impact on how I practice and learn medicine daily.
Jessica Ramsey
Osteopatic Medical Student, Third Year
I attended XPGH (now called Foundations of Health and Development) last year and can say that it was hands down the best missions training I’ve ever received. I’ve spent time in East Africa as a missionary and traveled all over the world on short-term trips and believe that issues tackled at this seminar are the issues that are most important, but least talked about in the Christian world. I highly recommend this course to anyone with even a remote interest in foreign missions.
Clay Hearn
First Year Medical Student