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Holding babies, sharing food, playing soccer with local schoolchildren. These are just a few of the memories that students who have participated in Global Medical Brigades cherish. Here are a few more: working hard, building trust, and changing lives—one at a time.

With chapters at colleges across the United States and internationally, Global Medical Brigades connects college-student volunteers with experienced medical professionals to run temporary clinics in areas with little or no access to health care. The organization works with the same communities over time, at the request of local leaders, to implement sustainable changes that aim to render this kind of intervention unnecessary.

At Brooklyn College, the program exists as a student-driven club for those interested in medicine, public health, and global service. For more than a decade, it has provided students the opportunity to take part in a weeklong medical mission called a brigade.

Having established operations in Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Greece, and Ghana, Global Medical Brigades expanded last year to Belize. It was there, in June 2024, that 15 Brooklyn College students and one chaperone participated in the first-ever brigade to the small, rural village of Indian Creek in that country’s south.

Being First Comes With Challenges

Given that Global Medical Brigades had no established presence within the local community, co-president of the Brooklyn College chapter Gabriana Nieves recalls being told in advance that, despite the community’s request for help, “it might not go that well, we might not really get anyone.”

Fellow co-president Ilana Ruf, a premed philosophy major concentrating in medical ethics, recalled the clinic’s first day, when the patients seemed “skeptical.”

With some time, however, the dynamic changed, and “by the last day, we saw maybe 50 people,” Ruf said. “It was very busy. There were so many people, and the kids were playing with us, hugging us. They were so welcoming.”

During that week in Belize, students worked with local and regional doctors. They supported more than 100 medical consultations and 200 dental treatments.

In a subsequent letter of thanks, Indian Creek community leader Ernesto Choc expressed “deep gratitude for the exceptional service provided by Global Brigades to our community. The impact of your work has been remarkable, providing crucial medical assistance and medications that have significantly improved residents’ lives.”

Maximizing Learning

Global Medical Brigade clinics are structured around several “stations,” each of which constitutes both a place within the makeshift clinic and a sequential step in a patient’s visit.

First comes intake and triage, after which patients see a doctor and possibly a dentist. Then, they visit the pharmacy and a health-education station, where students give presentations for children on topics like personal hygiene, nutrition, and exercise, while their families wait for medication.

Belize brigade member and senior Alana Abraham, a premed psychology major who served as the club’s president in 2023–24, reflected on how each station provided an opportunity to learn.

In intake and triage, “we would take vitals—height, weight, age, blood pressure, things like that. Then students would be with the doctors,” she said. At the pharmacy station, students were paired with a pharmacist, allowing them to learn more about medications and how they address patients’ needs.

Notably, student participation was structured to maximize learning.

“We rotated students daily to ensure everyone had an opportunity to volunteer in each station,” said Belize chaperone Sadiya Hoque ’23, a past president of the Brooklyn College chapter, who is currently special assistant to President Michelle J. Anderson.

Beyond the Clinic

For students on the Belize brigade, knowledge gained was not merely medical; they had opportunities to learn outside of the clinic about community and connection.

Nieves, a psychology major, recalled visiting patients in their houses on the final research day, a component of the program at first-time clinic locations where students gather information that future brigades can use to help the community.

The construction of the cinderblock and wood houses struck her as different—more open—than what she was used to, but what was truly memorable was the warm welcome students received once inside.

Visiting one family who offered the guests mangoes, Nieves was moved that “despite the fact that that was their food source, they still wanted to share with us.” And when a woman put her baby in Nieves’ arms to hold, Nieves “could have cried. They were just the sweetest, most welcoming people.”

Sustaining the Program

Before this most recent trip to Belize, though, the student-driven program was at risk.

Biology major Hoque went on her first Brooklyn College Global Medical Brigade in August 2018, to Panama. Premed at the time, she was so committed to going on the brigade that she paid her own way. “I had so much fun,” she said. “And that was the first time I ever did something like that.”

But COVID forced the program to pause in 2020, and it took committed members like Hoque to bring it back. So, in fall 2022, with in-person learning in full swing again and clubs restarting, Hoque turned her attention to re-establishing the local chapter.

At this point, there were interested students, but Hoque was the only club member who had actually been on a brigade, “so I was elected president,” she said.

Then, the group got down to business. They reactivated the club, created new bylaws, and determined standard operating procedures. With much of the institutional memory of the program lost, Hoque said, they needed to figure out “how to get done what needed to be done.”

Some of that was fundraising.

As a student club, the program receives funding to buy medical supplies for the community that students will serve through the school, drawn from student activity fees, as well as from the Stacey Garil Womack and Michael Garil Fund for the Brooklyn College Medical Brigades, which was established by Brooklyn College Foundation trustee Bernard H. Garil ’62 and his wife Ethel Garil. The rest of the budget, which can be thousands of dollars, comes from the club’s fundraising efforts (largely bake sales). The goal is to cover each student’s entire trip, minus airfare—which students pay themselves.

In June 2023, with their fundraising goals achieved, a group of 20 volunteers (19 students plus a chaperone) travelled to Panama, helping with clinics in La Candelaria, Las Delicias, El Calabazo, and El Membrillo, all in the province of Coclé. As with the Belize trip, the rewards to students were immense and intangible, affecting the way they saw the world and their place in it.

A Driving Force

Mariam Alex ’23, a premed chemistry and psychology double major in Macaulay Honors College, went on the 2023 Panama trip. It changed her perception and understanding of medicine, tropical diseases, and geographic differences.

The trip also gave Alex a closer look at the social and economic structures that affect public health, demonstrating “the prevalence of health inequity and the devastating effects that can have.” Diabetes, for example, which was a common ailment at the Panama clinics, as well as in Indian Creek, can lead to eye damage if left untreated—and yet, because of the barriers to medical care, said Alex, many of the patients were not initially aware that they had the disease.

The experience was perspective-changing for Abraham, too.

Originally from Texas, Abraham is in the Coordinated B.A.-M.D. Program at Brooklyn College, which she credits as giving her the confidence to understand that “I am smart enough to become a doctor.” For her, the brigade experience has been “a driving force to help me keep going on this journey, because I feel like there’s been so many times where I want to give up,” like when she was sitting for the MCAT and wondered, “Do I really even want to do this?” But then she recalled her time in Panama and Belize, and thought to herself, “Why wouldn’t I want to do this? Why wouldn’t I want to make a bigger impact?”

Looking Ahead

This June, the Brooklyn College Global Medical Brigades will head to Athens, where it will assist in providing medical care to refugee and migrant communities. Alumni can provide targeted grants to Brooklyn College Global Medical Brigades through the Brooklyn College Foundation.