{"id":65398,"date":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-student-aims-for-public-health-career-in-latin-america\/"},"modified":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","slug":"uri-student-aims-for-public-health-career-in-latin-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2007\/05\/uri-student-aims-for-public-health-career-in-latin-america\/","title":{"rendered":"URI student aims for public health career in Latin America"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tProvidence resident set to graduate from URI May 20, pursue med school<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 8, 2007 \u2013 Rachel Furman has always enjoyed learning languages. She learned Hebrew at home, took courses in Portuguese and French in high school, and fell in love with the Spanish language, which became her major at the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n


\n\tA growing interest in women\u2019s health issues that she developed on a volunteer trip to Guatemala in January 2007, coupled with an infectious disease course at URI, has convinced Furman to merge her passions and pursue a career in public health in Latin America when she graduates from URI May 20.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWhat was unsettling to me in Guatemala was the unequal distribution of health care,\u201d explained Furman. \u201cThose living in or near the capital could access health clinics, but those living in remote rural areas are likely to deliver their children without proper medical care. This experience helped me focus my goals.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFurman\u2019s trip to Guatemala City was an eye-opening experience. She volunteered for a month at a public maternity clinic, taking the vital signs of pregnant women, helping with prenatal exams, coaching women in labor, and offering them comfort during delivery.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t have any medical background, but you could tell they need a lot of help, and I\u2019m a quick learner, so they let me do it,\u201d Furman said. \u201cI was the only foreigner in the clinic, and nobody there spoke English, but you can\u2019t be shy. You can tell they lack a lot of resources \u2013 the beds are just iron cots with few pillows \u2013 but the doctors do such a wonderful job. All their record books are hand written, so part of my job was to write out every single form in Spanish.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFurman\u2019s experience in Guatemala followed closely behind an honors class in infectious diseases she took with URI Professor Roger LeBrun. \u201cRoger is very enthusiastic, very encouraging, and he gets so excited about his topic that even if you get an email from him telling you to write four pages for the next day\u2019s class, he\u2019s so excited about it that you don\u2019t see it as an inconvenience.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tLeBrun is equally impressed with Furman.<\/p>\n


\n“There are some students who believe earning credit for a course is enough,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are others of deep compassion like Rachel who have the courage to do so much more. They take what they’ve learned from my course, go out into the world, work in abject poverty at great personal risk, and change people’s lives forever.”<\/p>\n


\nGuatemala wasn\u2019t the first Latin American country Furman has visited. As a URI sophomore, she planned her own study abroad itinerary, beginning with an intensive language training experience in Buenos Aires, Argentina, followed by six weeks of classes in Valparaiso, Chile at the Universidad la Catolica, and concluding with three weeks of backpacking around Peru.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI stayed with a host family in Chile, and we lived right by the Pacific Ocean and just a couple hours away from the Andes Mountains, where we went skiing,\u201d said Furman, who competed on the URI ski team for four years. \u201cThat\u2019s when I really had a breakthrough and started to speak Spanish well. No one I met there spoke any English, so I was really forced to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n In Peru, Furman and two friends she met in Chile avoided the tourist destinations and instead rode buses to small towns to experience the local culture.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cOur most memorable experiences were being lost after sunset, not having a great mastery of the language, and not knowing where to stay at night,\u201d she recalled. \u201cThere\u2019s not a lot of diversity in the South American countries, so we got a lot of stares from people. It was the first time I felt like I stood out because of the way I looked. At first it\u2019s alienating, but then you get over it, take a deep breath, and keep on approaching people.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAfter graduation later this month, the URI student will take a year out of school and find a job in a public health organization before enrolling in medical school and returning to Latin America to ease the burden of women in need of health care.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providence resident set to graduate from URI May 20, pursue med school KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 8, 2007 \u2013 Rachel Furman has always enjoyed learning languages. She learned Hebrew at home, took courses in Portuguese and French in high school, and fell in love with the Spanish language, which became her major at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65400,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}