What is my fulbright project?

Examining Health Literacy Among Families with Children having Disabilities

After working alongside families in India, both this past summer and during my first move to India, I have fully realized how different health services are revealed, explained, complied with, and utilized. I wanted to understand how families in India are receiving health information and plans of care for their child. Navigating healthcare systems as a family is difficult even with an average abled child or even a neurotypically developed child, but throwing in a complex genetic or neurologic diagnosis quickly turns difficult into almost impossible. Especially when a parent has low health literacy skills. I proposed to Fulbright a study that tell the families side of the story by observing their experiences with navigating health care providers, therapies, and public health care services offered in India.  

In March of 2019, I was awarded a Fulbright Student Research Grant to return to India and completed this proposed project over the next year (Aug '19-Aug 20'). I am beyond excited to have this opportunity to return and gain a better understanding of the barrier families I work with at the clinic are facing. I plan to become a Family Nurse Practitioner and Disability Researcher. This experience from "the other side of the desk" will allow me an invaluable perspective of families trials and triumph in health care navigation. 

Part of my grant is fulfilling a Critical Language Enhancement Award, to learn Hindi. I must be able to speak Hindi in order to engage with and form trust with the families participating in my study. I am very excited to spend three months of intensive study to become proficient in this new and different language. I will be posting about the beautiful process of an American learning a language with devanagari script instead of english characters... this should be quite a fun journey :)

I plan to keep this blog updated on my research progress, and I pray I am able to conduct this at a high enough proficiency to publish my results and make an impact on the world of disability advocacy as well as make an impact on the facilitation in navigating public health care systems.