Allison's Project in Peru!

I'm a Master of Public Health student at the Colorado School of  Public Health--Anschutz Medical Campus majoring in community and behavioral health and global health. Last December, I had the opportunity to meet with some key people who work in rural Peru, and the "Out of the Office SMS System" was born.

Along the Napo River in the Peruvian Amazon, transportation is limited to boats, and village community healthcare workers are the first point of contact with the healthcare system for many people. It's costly and time-consuming for people to travel to visit the healthcare providers, so every trip counts. What happens if the healthcare provider isn't there? 

For my Master's thesis, I'll be testing an automated SMS system for community healthcare workers to find out whether other healthcare workers are "in the office" before referring patients to them. Long-distance wireless internet has been installed in the health posts in the area, and cell phone service is growing. Hopefully, this system will be able to expand to all of the communities along the river, and eventually permit a large amount of communication between the different healthcare providers (for example, sending results of malaria tests to healthcare workers by encrypted text, saving them multiple trips to the laboratory) and even interface with Peru's early warning system for disasters in the area. 

But first we need to do the pilot testing, and for that I need help! For this project, I need to raise funding for cell phones and t-shirts for the community healthcare workers, transportation, and housing. If you would consider donating, I'd be so humbled and grateful. And if you can't donate, no worries: please share this campaign instead! 

You can follow where your money goes here, on my Twitter page (@allison_maytag) or on my blog (notonlyapage.blogspot.com).