Last July, a group of Cornell students sat on mats in a wooden pavilion at the edge of a forest in southern India, passing around plants. A traditional healer from a local indigenous community explained which ones ease menstrual cramps, treat joint pain and soothe colicky infants.
The visit was part of a five-week program that brought seven Cornell students — including four from Cornell Human Ecology — to the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, a protected tropical forest region in the foothills of the Western Ghats, in the state of Tamil Nadu. The group, which teamed up with four students from the area, met with health practitioners to learn about local practices and conduct research projects that will inform future health interventions.
Francesca Saenz, a senior majoring in global and public health sciences, said the trip made concrete the effects of climate change and modernization in indigenous communities. To name one example, she and the other students saw a grocery store that, days earlier, had been ransacked by an elephant searching for food in a changing habitat.
“Just reading about climate change, you become desensitized,” she said. “Being able to actively see how it’s affecting people and what it’s taking from them — that’s when it becomes more personal.”
Known as the Nilgiris Field Learning Program, the initiative has brought Cornell students to the area to do field work and collaborate with the Keystone Foundation, an Indian nonprofit organization, since 2014. This summer, students spent mornings learning about global health and mental health through lectures and visits to hospitals, temples and tribal healers. In the afternoons, they studied research methods and implemented three research projects of their own.
The first involved a preliminary survey to understand the impact of the Keystone Foundation’s ongoing campaign to help local communities recognize and address anemia, which is prevalent in the area. The second focused on perceptions of mental health among local indigenous groups. The third project was a qualitative study that explored how environmental changes were affecting traditional healing practices and tribal identities.
For all three projects, students conducted focus groups, group interviews and one-on-one interviews with the help of translators. At the end of the trip, they shared their research with representatives of the Keystone Foundation, hospitals, community foundations and traditional healers.
The findings, which are not yet public, will also be disseminated through a report, academic paper, or conference presentation, and will inform future programming for the Keystone Foundation.
Saenz, who was among the students researching the anemia campaign, said the program solidified her commitment to obtaining a medical degree in addition to a PhD. The experience also cemented her desire to work in rural areas with limited access to healthcare, particularly in the Andes region, because of her cultural ties to the area. “I can still do research, but I want to actually provide help and knowledge, because that’s something that’s incredibly necessary in these communities,” she said.