BSN student works to turn class project into reality in Uganda

As a junior in the Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, Allison Trask worked with kinesiology, biology and public health students to develop a group exercise program for elders in Uganda. The program, called Furaharakati, aims to improve bone and joint pain through weight-bearing exercises.

While the group designed the program for a class project, it is now working to raise the funds to be able to implement the program and improve the lives of elders in Uganda. “I felt like it was a really cool opportunity,” said Trask. “Our group was just really passionate about the project and we felt like it could do a lot of good.”

Her team, which includes undergraduate students Allison Berry and Anna Solfest, developed the exercise program while enrolled in the Grand Challenge course Seeking Solutions to Global Health Issues.

“It’s a very challenging course because it’s expecting students to work across disciplines in teams to develop a realistic intervention that is fundable to support a problem in the developing world,” said Professor Cheryl Robertson, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, who co-taught the course and is Trask’s honor’s program adviser. “She is super tenacious and certainly had a leadership role in her team. Once they decided to focus on aging issues, she became very curious and started researching what is available for this growing senior community in urban east Africa and found that there is really nothing. Allison just went wild with this.”

The team competed in the Institute on the Environment’s Acara Challenge, which asks students to answer the question What’s your big idea? and coaches them on preparing proposals and presenting pitches. Trask’s group presented their plan for an exercise program to a panel of judges and was named a finalist. With support from the College of Education and Human Development, they then went on to participate in the World’s Challenge Challenge. The competition brought 30 teams to Canada to present their proposals that address global issues to a panel of academic and community leaders. “The entire experience was amazing and I am just so inspired by all the people I was able to meet,” said Trask.

Although Trask’s team didn’t receive funding in the challenge, it plans to continue to work on the project. Ultimately, she is grateful for the opportunity to work with peers from different disciplines and thinks the experience will help her in her public health nursing career. “I think it was really amazing to work with students from other programs,” said Trask. “In the Grand Challenge class, we did a lot of conceptual and critical thinking and it was interesting to see how everyone comes at it in a different way. I think having the different majors and different backgrounds made our project a lot stronger since we all came at from different perspectives.”