Championing Child Health: USD Professor's Ongoing Mission in Uganda

As the University of San Diego began celebrating its 75th anniversary this January, a faculty member of the university’s Hahn School of Nursing and Health Sciences was quietly planning another academic visit to Uganda to improve health outcomes for children.

Associate Professor of Pediatric Nursing Martha Grant Fuller has conducted education and research for several years in Uganda, providing continuing education and training to numerous nurses at Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital. 

“In recent years, hospitals in Uganda have increased their abilities to provide neonatal care to preterm infants and those with birth asphyxia, serious infections, and other conditions,” says Fuller. “Now they are trying to institute regular systems to follow these babies after they are discharged.” 

“Groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics and California Children's Services all recommend that babies who were born early or who had significant problems at birth be seen longitudinally using an organized system,” says Fuller. “That is how we assess the growth, neurologic and developmental outcomes of infants and children who were premature or very ill when born — the purposes of these programs include clinical care and research and can also serve as a way to measure the quality of the care provided."

Fuller is a recognized expert in researching the long-term health outcomes for “preemies,” having more than 25 years in the field as a Nurse Practitioner. In her work, Fuller has become a "Gold Standard" examiner for multi-site studies for the National Institutes of Health, responsible for certifying other examiners to make sure that all assessments are performed in a reliable and standard way.

Fuller currently provides research assessments for the Sharp Neonatal Research Institute and is responsible for certifying examiners from other sites in performance of the developmental assessment.

She traveled to Mbarara, Uganda, a day’s drive from the nation’s capital Kampala, where she shared her expertise to develop a longitudinal follow-up program, educating nurses, physicians and medical officers at Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital in a day-long mini-conference on Neonatal Neuro-developmental follow-up. Twenty-seven professionals attended, some of them from as far away as the "West Nile" region of Uganda - a 14-hour drive to the northwest that borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan

This took place on June 11 at Holy Innocents Children's Hospital.

The Hahn School of Nursing at the University of San Diego has a long association with Holy Innocents Children’s Hospital.  Anita Hunter, PhD, RN, former faculty at the USD Hahn School was instrumental in efforts to found this hospital with groundbreaking in 2008.

– James Grant