The Honduran Health Alliance is an international alliance of organizations working together in the areas of education, capacity building, health, and development.  Program partners currently focus their efforts on women's reproductive health and community development through an annual women’s health education & cervical cancer screening project.

The 2012 HHA Team on our way to clinic in Madrigales!

Planning and collaboration occur throughout the year and the outreach project takes place every summer.  A group of students from the University of North Carolina's Schools of Medicine and Public Health travels to the southern department of Choluteca, Honduras for the women's health project.  Students visit the six partner communities of Las Communidades Unidas surrounding El Corpus where they live with host families and give health education talks (charlas) for the local women.  Supervised by UNC physicians, students also organize and run a week-long clinic for the women, which includes cervical cancer screening and family planning counseling and resources.  Follow-up care is paid for by the HHA program and provided by Alliance partners at all levels of the health care system, from community clinics to tertiary care centers.

2012
The trip in July 2012 marked the ninth consecutive summer that HHA students have worked in Honduras.  The five main charlas given this year in the communities covered information about the HHA Clinic, Nutrition, Family Planning, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Cervical Cancer, and Domestic Violence.  In the clinic, the family planning options offered were condoms, birth control pills, Depo provera injections and IUDs.   Furthermore, 350 women were seen in clinic, and we provided all women who received pap smears with their results the following week.  Any patients with abnormal results or exams will be fully funded and tracked for follow-up care (including colposcopy, biopsy, etc).  

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For further details about the trip see 2010 Trip Highlights.

Amy Marietta and Rachel Adams taking a medical history at the Madrigales clinic