Nigerian Medical Students' Association: Active Citizenship for Health Improving Malaria Prevention and Treatment Awareness

Northern Maine is home to some of America's poorest - but it ranks high on national measures of health. Hospital programs visit more patients in their homes where they can be more comfortable and receive everything they need, which in turn reduces medical costs.

In a rapidly gentrifying Mexico City neighborhood, two artists refurbished an icon and set up an altar for Santa Mari La Juaricua, a saint to protect residents from eviction. The saint raises awareness and acts as a reminder about housing issues and the icon has been taken up by the residents and has been used in processions and protests.

Jane Cavarozzi, an entrepreneur and activist, started Dirty Girl coffee to “support economic development and women’s advancement in the small, depressed villages around Appalachian Ohio.” She lives in the town of Glouster and is respected for living local and working local, as opposed to being an outsider problem-solver. Though her coffee company is just one small step forward, she works closely with community groups to move economic development initiatives for the region forward.

The Women’s Collective is a nonprofit that works with more than 10,000 subsistence farmers in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu to promote food security using millets, a crop resilient to drought and climate change. For Pavitra, one of those farmers, she began cultivating the ancient grains in 2015 and now has more than enough food to feed her family year-round. However, there’s a lack of public investment in millet production and machinery. And there’s no unified effort to create demand for millets: Some state governments lead the charge and in other states, it’s led by grassroots organizations.

A New York-based nonprofit called Students for a Free Tibet is training Tibetans in "how to stage nonviolent protests." This effort, in conjunction with other Tibetan NGOs, has helped activists in Dharamsala, India to become "more organized, media savvy and technologically sophisticated," which in turn has increased the number of people who have come together to participate in the nonviolent protests.

Volunteer citizen seismologists in Haiti are collecting data on earthquakes and aftershocks with equipment provided by researchers to better understand seismic hazards and fault locations in the country.

Teams of Community Direct Distributors (CDD) are leading drug distribution campaigns to prevent and eliminate neglected tropical diseases in hard-to-reach, rural areas. These CDDs are members of the community they serve and are trained to educate the locals on disease prevention and administer the drugs themselves. With the CDDs’ help, several states have already eliminated some diseases and greatly reduced the spread of others.

Mexico's Pilot Program for Licensed Physicians brings Mexican doctors to the states to address the lack of culturally relevant healthcare and Spanish-speaking healthcare providers, particularly in rural areas with large immigrant populations. Currently, the program has 30 Mexican doctors working in various counties throughout the state.

A pair of doctors are working to make healthcare more accessible and affordable by training area hospitals to use new technology, like ultrasound devices, to detect non-communicable diseases. Through their newly established non-communicable disease clinic staffed with personnel trained to provide more precise medical care, about 1,100 patients have been cared for.

To enhance rural access to healthcare in Nigeria, the Parkers Mobile Clinic partners with local volunteers, healthcare professionals, educators, and community development advocates to identify and remedy unique healthcare gaps. Outreach programs are then designed to provide localized mental health support, nutritional counseling, and other reproductive health services.