As a school nurse, Cathleen O’Connor gave 23 years of service to the East Penn School District. She then took the advice of author M.K. Soni and “Retire[d] from work, but not from life.”

The day O’Connor left East Penn, she received news of her acceptance into Peace Corps/Seed Global Health, a position she discovered in a Peace Corps newsletter.

After working as a nurse for approximately 45 years in a variety of situations, O’Connor possesses the skills that made her ideal for participation in the Global Health Services Partnership.

This program, as defined on the Peace Corps’ web page, “...aims to improve clinical education, expand the base of physician and nursing educators and build healthcare capacity in countries that face critical shortages of healthcare providers.” To meet these goals, GHSP incorporates elements of the Peace Corps, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and Seed Global Health.

O’Connor’s role in the program took her to Tanzania.

She states that, “Even from college, I wanted to live in another culture.”

Consequently, O’Connor took sleeping under mosquito netting, instructing nursing students whose first language is Swahili and having limited access to electricity in stride.

For her first year of service O’Connor was situated in the Tanzanian capital of Dodoma; she spent her second year in the city of Mwanga.

O’Connor, who possesses a strong background in community healthcare, quickly realized routine health maintenance services are nearly non-existent for school age children.

Improvements have been in healthcare for infants and the very young; however, when a child enters school, most of those programs end.

Inspired by the opportunity to, in her own words, “make a difference,” O’Connor joined forces with her Tanzanian counterpart Lucy Kamakaba, volunteer Deb Goldman and the Community Health faculty at Catholic University of Health and Allied Services.

Because long-term wellness often depends on identifying a minor problem before it becomes a major concern, the team developed a basic health assessment for school children. They trained second year nursing students to perform hands-on evaluations based on data they gathered by recording students’ heights and weights and administering vision and auditory tests.

Since they lacked rudimentary equipment, O’Connor’s team brought, printed, or devised scales, eye-exam charts, tape measures and hearing tests.

The project fulfilled two goals: to provide much needed health services to school children and to afford nursing students practical experience in identifying problems and generating pro-active responses.

The project proved valuable from the start. The nursing students identified two jaundiced children and directed them to receive appropriate treatment. They also referred 12 youngsters in need of vaccinations to a local clinic. In the process, the incipient nurses gained experience and confidence.

Although she returned to the States in July 2015, O’Connor hopes the system she and her colleagues piloted will grow and spread to villages throughout Tanzania.

To that end, she intends to garner financial support to be used to purchase the necessary assessment equipment.

For a country in desperate need of trained medical professionals and a reliable healthcare system, instituting routine wellness evaluations for children is vital.

O’Connor describes her experience as “...probably the most adventure I have had in my whole life.” Hers is most certainly a venture that has added quality to the lives of others.

To read O’Connor’s story in her own words visit seedglobalhealth.org/cathleen.

Anyone wishing to provide support for the program she helped to initiate may do so by donating to www.gofundme.com/ugigmj38.