The Medlife movement works with low-income communities aiming to improve medicine, education and community development projects. DePaul’s Medlife chapter is currently preparing for their upcoming service-learning trip to San José, Costa Rica, over spring break.

Medlife prepares students for something beyond their textbooks. DePaul’s Medlife chapter, including pre-med and public health students, spends months preparing for their annual service-learning trips to countries in Latin America and Africa. Whether it’s building a walkway for students or bringing medical care to remote communities, this hands-on mission brings classroom learning to life and gives participants a firsthand look at health care inequalities of impoverished communities.

Vivian Jones, DePaul’s Medlife community outreach coordinator, is a sophomore majoring in psychology. Jones aspires to go into mental health counseling or get her doctorate and become a psychologist. After going on her first service-learning trip to Ecuador freshman year, she has gained a new outlook she said she will never forget. 

“The more that you experience the world outside of the US, and the more that you gain sympathy and empathy for these people who are struggling with something that we see as so basic, is going to really be a good stepping stone to how I treat my patients in the future as a future clinician,” Jones said. 

DePaul sophomore Siddhanth Rao, Medlife’s event coordinator, said one of his biggest takeaways from last year’s trip to Ecuador was the impact of building the paved pathway at a high school, which created a safer way for students to get to school, especially in wet weather. Rao said the students will have more time to focus on education if they have safer commutes. 

“Over there, it’s more so these warehouse sort of structures that the community themselves build and things, even like a concrete pathway, were stuff that we kind of take for granted,” Rao said. 

The first three letters of Medlife stand for medicine, education and development. Its mission is to work with these communities in their fight for fair access to essential resources restricted by poverty. Students who have attended service-learning trips are dedicating their time to volunteer to provide medical care access.

To prepare, the chapter conducts pre-departure workshops and general body meetings prior to the service trips to prepare students. In the sessions, students work on essential skills, such as medical Spanish terminology, Spanish dialects, setting realistic expectations and collaborating with students from other college chapters.

“We worked on taking your blood pressure, we worked on taking heart rate and temperature — and all those things that we are actually going to be doing,” Jones said. 

Students, she added, also must prepare for the trips emotionally.

“This will impact you in a way that it just fills your heart,” Jones said. “It was heartbreaking to learn that there are such inequities in other countries’ health care systems, but it also was so fulfilling, and it was such a monumental turning point for me to see the kindness that those citizens and people were willing to give me.”

In Ecuador, the group stayed in Riobamba, but each day, they would travel to more remote villages in the mountains.

Ethan Ong, a Medlife executive board member and junior majoring in health sciences on a pre-med track, said that the day they helped build the pathway in Ecuador embodied the Vincentian spirit.

“Some of the moms of the kids were also helping with the project. They expressed their gratitude to us through sharing bread and a cup of Coke,” Ong toldThe DePaulia in an email. “This helped remind me why I was here and why we are helping these communities.”

Matthew Lam, DePaul Medlife executive board member, is a junior majoring in psychology. He described how they also provided care to a patient who lived hours from the closest hospital and who would have not survived without the help they could give him in his village. 

“We didn’t just provide health care; we removed a structural barrier to life itself,” Lam said in an email. “This care ensured the patient would be able to live longer, face existing challenges and have the opportunity to be successful.”

Students interested in joining Medlife or learning more can join their DeHub to receive emails about club activities and upcoming meetings.

“It has reaffirmed my belief that every single person deserves love,” Jones said. “It does not matter how rich you are. It does not matter any sort of specification or any sort of thing that could possibly make you different from someone else. 

“Literally, no matter who you are, you deserve love.”

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