Building Healthy Communities: study abroad, service learning and creative inquiry in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

This creative inquiry project engages Clemson students in a reflective critical thinking learning process and incorporates service learning opportunities in order to study the health situation of Las Malvinas II, a low-resourced and low-income setting bordering the highly polluted Ozama River in this city of Santo Domingo. Dr. Arelis Moore de Peralta from Clemson’s Institute on Family and Neighborhood Life will discuss how the project seeks to expand students’ knowledge on the various determinants of communities’ health and well-being by examining the socio-cultural context in human development and family life in Latin-America and the Caribbean (LAC). Students use the input gathered from direct interactions with the community to recommend appropriate courses of action for improvement under the healthy communities’ and socio-ecological frameworks. Furthermore, this course seeks to increase students’ cultural competence by translating applicable evidence-based health practices from the US to a LAC country.