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Teaching Be the Change

Health sciences professor and students make a difference in South Africa

By Carly LeDuc ('08)

Students in health science professor Debra Sutton's Health 490 class, HIV/AIDS Prevention in South Africa, spent time at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in South Africa in May.

Students in health science professor Debra Sutton's Health 490 class, HIV/AIDS Prevention in South Africa, spent time at the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre in South Africa in May. Top left to right: Jenness Kocsis, Hillary Pauli, Whitney Gee, Rachel Clark, Julie Fry. Bottom left to right: Molly Mueller, Ashleigh Oliver, Jessica Hill, Julialyn Deos, Liz Nelson.

Class focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention in South Africa

Dr. Debra Sutton, associate professor of health sciences, and 10 JMU students traveled to South Africa this past May as part of Sutton's Health 490 class, HIV/AIDS Prevention in South Africa. The course focuses on the effects that AIDS has had on several South African towns, and what steps are being taken to curb the epidemic.

Visit Desmond Tutu HIV Centre

Students arrived in Cape Town on May 7, and traveled to numerous places such as Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent almost 27 years in the maximum security prison, the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre and the Centre for the Study of AIDS at the University of Pretoria. Students also participated in a game drive in one of South Africa's wildlife preserves.

"My goal of the trip was to introduce a select group of JMU students majoring in some health related area to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Africa," says Sutton. "Our visits to a variety of medical, educational and social interventions were very successful to meeting this goal."

"Our visits to a variety of medical, educational and social interventions were very successful," -- Dr. Debra Sutton

2008 trip planned

Sutton will take 10 additional students to South Africa June 9-25, 2008. The students will have a similar experience to that of a Peace Corps volunteer in a rural, impoverished area of the eastern cape of South Africa. Students will volunteer in community projects in Hamburg, South Africa, and surrounding villages, observe various medical, educational, and social prevention strategies for the AIDS epidemic, participate in the delivery of health care services with the supervision of medical professionals, and experience historical, cultural, and environmental aspects of South African life.