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campus news C HICAGO PEORIA R OCK F ORD URBANA- C HAM P AIGN Dominican Connection Annual Caribbean trip boosts knowledge of diseases that can return from abroad Max Brito and the group of Illinois Medicine fellows, residents and medical students outside of the Dr. Salvador B. Gautier Hospital in Santo Domingo, one of the locations of the two-week rotation be prepared to recognize and treat. To that end, each year Max Brito, A 4 | FALL 2012 MD, associate professor and vice chair for urban global health in the department of medicine, takes Illinois Medicine fellows, residents and medical students on a two-week elective rota- tion in the Dominican Republic. "They learn about tropical diseas- es that are common in resource-poor settings, they learn about how care is provided in those settings, and they learn about the culture of the Domini- can people," Brito says. The diseases S TRAVEL HAS RISEN in an increasingly global economy, more people are returning to the U.S. hav- ing contracted tropical dis- eases that physicians must include malaria, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, Dengue fever, leprosy and many others. In addition, the trip aims to increase participants' cultural understanding and sensitivity in caring for Latino patients in the U.S. Usually taken in January, the trip includes a group of about 15 people, including 10 senior residents in the three-year internal medicine residency program (chosen from a pool that averages about two dozen applicants), two internal medicine fellows, College of Medicine faculty and occasionally faculty members from other colleges. The first week is spent in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic capi- tal, where the trainees undergo clinical rotations at a general medicine hospital, a pediatric hospital, a tropical disease control center and a dermatological institute. The trainees participate in clinical rounds and case discussions, attend lectures on tropical medicine and visit a mosquito lab to learn about how the insect transmits diseases. The group spends the second week in Peravia, a rural province in the southern Dominican Republic. "We distribute the residents in pairs to rural clinics, where they learn how primary care is provided in rural areas with constrained resources," Brito says. "They work in the clinics in the morning, and in the afternoon they do community work." Although the trainees pay for their airfare, all the other costs are covered by the department of internal medi- cine and funds from the Dr. Marvin K. Colbert Endowment, established and named for a former Illinois Medicine faculty member. "It's helpful to learn about disease processes that we're not comfortable seeing on a daily basis. It certainly broadens our differential diagnosis," says Stockton Mayer, DO, a second-year fellow in internal medicine who took part in the trip in 2010 during his third year of residency. Since returning, he's encoun- tered multiple cases of malaria and even diagnosed a case of Dengue fever. "Seeing it and understanding it there helped us to apply it here," Mayer says. "It's great the College of Medicine makes this program available. We live in a global community, and it's important to be able to be part of that global community." PHOTO: ALINA VARGAS-AFANASIEVA