I Health Symposium on Neglected Populations – Brazil (IFMSA-Brazil)

Name of the activity: I Health Symposium on Neglected Populations

Country/NMO: Brazil (IFMSA-Brazil)

Program: Dignified & Non-Discriminatory Healthcare

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Education

General description:

Due to the current context, in which around 1 billion people are neglected, living in precarious conditions and without access to high-quality health services, the local committees of the University of Pernambuco and UNINASSAU of IFMSA Brazil held a symposium with the theme of neglected populations. The event was elaborated in order to develop a critical attitude on the subject. For impact assessment, a form containing some issues related to the issue was used. The number of people affected was 60 people. The participants’ age profile comprised adolescents and adults and the socio-economic profile included Class A and Class B. From this symposium, it can be observed that there is still a lot of disinformation among students and professionals, in the area of ​​health, regarding the topic addressed. By verifying the results of the post test, we can conclude that the information provided by the symposium was well assimilated by the listeners.

Focus area:

Health inequities

Problem statement:

Due to the current context, in which around one billion people are neglected, living in precarious conditions and without access to high-quality health services, the local committees UNINASSAU of the IFMSA Brazil – held a symposium with the theme of neglected populations. The event was elaborated in order to develop a critical attitude on the subject, as well as to approach the subject between students and health professionals, in order to give information about a subject that is so relevant.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Students and health professionals

Objectives and indicators of success:

General objective: Provide a discussion on the situation of neglected reality of Pernambuco, in the aspect of health and in an interdisciplinary way.
About the indicators of success, 49 listeners were effectively enrolled in the event of the 1st Symposium on Neglected Populations. With the objective of evaluating the impact of lectures that were generally done in the form of talk wheels, a pre-test and a post-test were conducted with questions produced by the speakers themselves, on the Kahoot platform. The previous test had 15 questions (with a sample of 29 people on average), while the post test had 11 questions (and sample of 25 people).

Methodology:

 The event was introduced with a presentation of IFMSA Brazil and its participating committees. Each population ranked had its own script defined by the lecture’s moderator, given that the base was always the access to Health from these populations. First, there was a debate on people with physical disabilities and rural population, in addition to a moment about the health-disease process and epidemiology in Brazil and worldwide according to the theme being exposed. On the second day, apart from lectures about the black population, street population, prison population, and female population, there was also a moment called “Workshop: how to serve the LGBTQ+ population”.

Plans for evaluation:

By means of questions about the populations listed for the event, a test was developed prior to the beginning of the lectures, where it was possible to measure the prior knowledge of the participating students about the characteristics of populations with physical disabilities, rural populations, women’s health, Black Population , Street Population and Incarcerated. The content of the tests involved knowledge about the health-disease process, epidemiology in Brazil and in the world, besides listing the main challenges faced by them, such as prejudice, neglect and delay in health care.