News Releases

UWI hosts closing ceremony for secondary school internships

For Release Upon Receipt - August 16, 2012

St. Augustine


Twenty secondary school students from Trinidad and Tobago interned this summer in Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) through an innovative partnership between The University of West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus and the US-based Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (www.arthurasheinstitute.org) in Brooklyn, New York. The closing awards ceremony will be held on Friday 17th August, 2012, from 9.30am-12.30pm, at Amphitheatre A, UWI’s Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt. Hope

Guests at the ceremony include Mr. Alex McClaren, Public Affairs Officer for the US Embassy. Among those scheduled to give remarks at the ceremony are keynote speaker, Gregory Sloane Seale, National Coordinator, Citizens Security Programme of the Ministry of National Security, and noted musician and activist, Wendell Manwarren.

Founded in 1993 by international tennis champion and humanitarian, Arthur Ashe, in response to concerns about health care delivery in urban United States, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, is located at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in multi-ethnic Brooklyn, New York, USA. The Institute collaborates with diverse community partners to design, incubate and replicate neighbourhood-based model interventions targeting health conditions that disproportionately affect minorities.

As the 2011-12 Fulbright Regional Nexus Scholar Institute CEO, Dr. Ruth C. Browne led the replication of the successful US-based summer internship in Trinidad, partnering with UWI’s Faculty of Medical Sciences. “Arthur was a citizen of the world. We are privileged to work with our Caribbean partners to carry his legacy into an international setting, influencing young minds early to commit to working in their communities.”

The UWI-based Social Determinants Health Internship Programme exposed 20 young people from Trinidad and Tobago to the health-related work done by nine local NGOs. This programme helped them to develop research and professional skills through a five-week curriculum developed in partnership with the Institute and UWI’s Faculty of Medical Sciences. “As the only Caribbean medical school offering the problem-based learning where students interact in small groups, supplemented by didactic lectures, we found the process of working with the Institute to develop the social determinants curriculum within the context of Trinidad and Tobago extremely valuable, a model of productive international collaboration,” said Professor Samuel Ramsewak, Dean of the School of Medical Sciences.

At the ceremony, student interns Jheuel Carter-Guy and Karishma Harrilal-Maharaj, will present their project titled “Vehicular Emissions and the Health Belief Model,” which was developed in partnership with The Cropper Foundation. Eight additional projects were completed, including topics on “Social Media as a Tool for Communicating Health Messages to Adolescents” developed with the Toco Foundation, “Assessment of Opportunities for Increasing Awareness of Environmental Issues at the Tobago Heritage Festival” with Environment Tobago and “Examining the Socio-economic Factors of Pacemaker/Defibrillator Patients” with Heartbeat International of Trinidad and Tobago.

For further information, please contact Nicole Primus at (868) 298-8822 or (876) 428-6576, or contact Dr. Ruth C. Browne at (212) 203-8147 or via e-mail at rbrowne@arthurasheinstitute.org.

For the latest UWI News, click http://sta.uwi.edu/news.

About UWI

Over the last six decades, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged University with over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest and most longstanding higher education provider in the English-speaking Caribbean, with main campuses in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, and Centres in Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St Christopher (St Kitts) & Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent & the Grenadines. UWI recently launched its Open Campus, a virtual campus with over 50 physical site locations across the region, serving over 20 countries in the English-speaking Caribbean. UWI is an international university with faculty and students from over 40 countries and collaborative links with over 60 universities around the world. Through its seven Faculties, UWI offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Pure & Applied Sciences, Science and Agriculture, and Social Sciences.

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

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