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SOM’s graduates are envisioned to be community health practitioners and policy makers. After four years of medical studies, the students take up Masters in Public Health (MPH) to equip them with managerial and leadership competencies. In contrast to other MPH programs offered in other Universities of the Philippines, the MPH, is an applied program designed to prepare graduate students to help solve the burgeoning health problems in Region 9, Mindanao and beyond. The MPH program nests the traditional MPH topics within critical social, political, economic, and cultural perspectives. It focuses not on disease and its biological bases but on health and its social, economic and political determinants. Students are exposed to critical analyses of the process involved in the social production of health. The MPH program combines modular course work and a thesis to produce graduates who understand the dependency of community health status on social, economic, cultural and political process and who are equipped to work with communities towards enhancing their health development status. Some of the modular courses offered likewise concentrate in the training of health professionals with leadership skills in public health, development and promotion of health, and prevention of diseases. The content prepares graduates for positions in diverse public health and non-profit setting including government, voluntary health organization (VHO) and community based primary health care. Student population composes of fifty percent Muslims and the other half are Christians, not a typical average of division of religious affiliation in Zamboanga City. Muslim graduates are able to serve in Muslim communities where health conditions are often in worse off condition than in Christian communities.
INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION Various international institutions have partnership with ADZU-SOM like the University of Calgary, Humanitarian Emergency and Logistic Preparedness [HELP] Inc. The ADZU-SOM also shares its practice with some medical institutions and organizations in Laos, Cambodia and Nepal, with the help of the University of Calgary. International groups, such as the Canadian Rural Physicians Association, European Commission, have taken an interest in the school’s innovative and socially-responsive medical practice. They come and visit despite negative travel advisories. ADZU President Fr. Antonio Moreno, SJ asked one official representative of the European Commission who visited a year ago, how many medical schools he has visited in the Philippines, he said “only one” – and that’s ADZU-SOM. “Last December in Havana, Cuba,” Moreno continues, “our SOM was one of the 8 medical schools around the globe to found a network of medical schools with strong social accountability. In that gathering, SOM Dean Fortunato Cristobal presented a paper entitled “Medical Education for Health Equity: The Philippine Experience (A Community forming Students, A Student Transforming Community Model). In his paper,
Dr. Cristobal talked about how the conventional medical educational system in the Philippines was unable to address the needs of the greater population, thus prompting the ADZUSOM to innovate its curriculum. His talk delved on the experience
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Jesuits on acebook: Fad or Frontier?
of the ADZU-SOM when PBL and Community Based Medical Education were introduced by the school. He further expounded on how the students were molded into responsible doctors with a love for service while they were exposed in the community and how these same communities were transformed by the students. His report of a graduate retention of 92% serving in rural communities after graduation coupled with an dramatic decrease in the Infant Mortality Rate drew an appreciative applause from the audience.” This conference was initiated by the Ministry of Public Health of Cuba and Pan American Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) to help achieve health care that responds to the needs and hopes of people around the world, especially those of marginalized and discriminated populations. Last year, ADZU-SOM was a recipient of HELP, Inc., receiving over a quarter million dollars in medical supplies and equipment to rural clinics for the island of Western Mindanao. The road to a better health system in Western Mindanao and the Island Province of Basilan, Sulu and TawiTawi is long and winding. AdZU-SOM is a vehicle to the transformation of the health condition in this part of the country. In partnership with other institutions and organizations both here and abroad, it is hoped that the actors
Evangelizing the World of Online Social Networking by Sch. Jordan J. Orbe, SJ
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hat’s the latest on your newsfeed? What did you write on your status update today? Have you tagged anyone lately? If you found these questions intelligible, then chances are you already have a Facebook account. If not, then a few facts and figures may help enlighten the uninitiated. Facebook, created in 2004 by then Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, is one of the most widely used social networking websites on the internet today. It has around 200 million active users, 70% of which are outside the United States (other top social networking sites are MySpace and Twitter; for Filipinos, there’s Multiply and Friendster). If you don’t know what online social networking is because (gasp!) you don’t use the internet, just think of it as your friendly meet-andgreet club where people converse, share stuff and keep in touch… across different time zones. If you are thinking, “Oh no, I am too old to get into any of those things,” you may be surprised to know that the fastest growing segment of Facebook users are those 35-54 years old (276.4% growth, doubling every month!) followed by those over 55 years old (194.3% growth). In other words, your high school classmates and their mothers are already on Facebook. And of course, so are the Jesuits. A random search in the Facebook site reveals around 99 user groups that
of health reform can improve chances of making a difference in a deeply multicultural region but plagued with conflict and poverty.
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are “Jesuit related,” which include the legitimate (Jesuits on Facebook, 617 members; Jesuits in Formation, 317 members, Pinoy Jesuits, 48 members), the droll (I Have Confidence in Jesuits, 1 member), the dubious (Former Jesuits and Those who Love Them, 16 members), and even the sinister (The Order of Jesuits and It’s [sic] Diabolical History, 7 members). Besides these, there is no telling exactly how many pages and members’ profiles belong to real-life Jesuits. When asked why they are Facebook users, some Filipino Jesuits say that it’s an easy and efficient way to keep in touch with friends, family and fellow Jesuits. Fr. Arnie Bugtas, who is currently doing pastoral counseling internship in Canada, appreciates how he feels part of important Jesuit events like ordinations and major feasts through Facebook. This is echoed by another Jesuit overseas, Scholastic Tony Basilio who considers being on Facebook a form of support while he finishes his postgraduate studies in Taiwan. For them and the Jesuits who use online networking sites, it is easy to send and receive greetings, share content like pictures, videos and articles as well as get the latest updates from different parts of the world. A moment’s glance at their daily newsfeed would tell them for instance that Fr. Danny Huang has uploaded new reflections on the day’s feast, Fr. Joe Quilongquilong was featured in a coffeetable book about Filipinos in Italy, and Fr. Dan McNamara is WINDHOVER
December 2009