Intership Notes: Finishing Up

Week 8

Data entry

Also this week, I had the opportunity to speak to the HIV coordintor for the municipal health dept. of SMA. I was able to get another perspective on the HIV services and learn what patients with HIV did in this jurisdiction. A little more difficult for these folks because they have to travel over an hour or more by bus to get to the CAPASITS clinic in Celaya.

Week 9

Data Analysis, umm, but I must say it feels a little disingenuous to call it "analysis" if I don't have a regression or even a p-value anywhere near the report. Nonetheless, data was analyzed and summarized using my second favorite statistical program, STATA.

I had the chance to speak with Dr. Meza (state HIV coordinator), it turns out that the health insurance system in México is way complicated. There are several different systems, like PEMEX, SEDENA, IMSS, IMSTEE, who each have their own networks. It's like if each gov't dept had its own veterans style health insurance system. PEMEX is the one for the Mexican owned petroleum company (I wish we had one of those!). SEDENA I believe if for the military, and IMSS and IMSTEE are for other groups of people defined by their occupation. He was commenting about the complications that arise from these fragmented systems.

Also, I learned more useful information about why CAPASITS Celaya had a hard time participating. Apparently, they are still under the management of the general hospital, so that is who they needed approval from to collaborate with us. As I have mentioned in past posts, the Celaya General Hospital has been less than helpful with the HIV related projects.

Week 10

In the last week, I wrapped all my tables and graphs into a report to be turned in the state health dept. All written in Spanish with some necessary grammar help from Juan and María. With the report I was careful to describe "issues" and recommendations with sensitivity, and in a way that they could perhaps be incorporated. One of the big problems that we noticed was that the budget the HIV programs operated on weren't enough to cover everything that we would've liked to have seen. With that in mind, I tried to aim the recommendations to the most pertinent issues such as providers not having the materials to follow universal precautions or the majority of participants not knowing what CAPASITS (HIV clinic) is.