Dr. Dave Jenkins will be presenting “Creating Lasting Change in Remote Islands in Indonesia” on Monday, September 9th from 12:00-1:00pm PT in the BSB Garren Auditorium on the UCSD campus in La Jolla. The seminar is free and all UCSD School of Medicine fellows, faculty and interested public are invited to attend.
Dr. Jenkins, known as “Dr. Dave” to those around him, founded SurfAid as a humanitarian organization in 2000 after taking a surf vacation in the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia. While visiting, Dr. Dave discovered local communities with extreme, but preventable, childhood mortality and morbidity.
Commenting on what happened next, Dr. Dave said: “It became a life-changing moment when I realized that I could not sail away back to my wealthy lifestyle without making a significant contribution to turning this situation around."
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Dr. Dave left his practice in Singapore, sold his home, and mobilized aid efforts to develop sustainable programs for, and with, the people in Western Indonesia. Thirteen years later, SurfAid now employs over 60 people in Indonesia, Sydney, and San Diego, and this month started work for the first time in Eastern Indonesia, on the island of Sumbawa.
Dr. Dave recognized early on most of the deaths would be prevented by changes to a key set of low-cost/high-impact behaviors such as simple sanitation routines like hand washing, proper breastfeeding, utilization of clean birthing tools, and providing salt and sugar solutions for diarrhea. Using innovative techniques like participatory drama and other approaches through its Community-based Health Program, SurfAid works in conjunction with local health departments and communities to create impactful, long-sustaining health programs.
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Topics during the presentation include:
- The founding of SurfAid, key defining moments in its history, and the critical lessons learnt along the way.
- The SurfAid integrated strategy of creating lasting change which includes building government capacity to deliver primary health services and community mobilization that enables change in the key lifesaving health behaviors.
- Examples from the field Dr. Jenkins showing how the new science of behavior change can help design successful community health programs.
