Doing Good, Not Harm: A Model of Best Practices for Short Term Medical and Public Health Brigades

Short term medical and public health brigades that travel to remote villages in Less Developed Country (LDC)s have a record of instances where “doing good” has resulted in “doing harm”.  Sometimes labeled in derogatory terms such as "volunteer vacations" , they can be seen as self-serving and, at worst, destructive by sending volunteers with no  training, cultural or  technical,  into under-resourced areas. In addition, the work conducted by volunteers can be ineffective, inappropriate and non-sustainable.  However, they can also have positive tangible and intangible  outcomes  for the volunteer, the recipient community and the host country.

This paper presents the results of  an exploratory descriptive study to   identify and map Best Practices of Short Term Brigades (STBs). Using the Socio-ecologic model as a guiding framework, six areas of best practices were identified:  sustainability , evidence-based interventions, cultural awareness, volunteer competency, and an equitable balance between top-down and community-based, bottom-up approaches. The model will be presented, with illustrative vignettes of each of the six areas of Best Practices. . Audience engagement regarding  the analysis will be encouraged