Ryan Walton

Champaign, IL

Passionate About:

I attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Human Development and Family Studies major (Pre-medical). I have taken the initiative to volunteer abroad in Honduras for two consecutive years and soon in South Africa in December 2016 to gain some insight on health disparities on a global scale and offer assistance in mitigating these health disparities. These are just a few of the places I have been, and in the future, I hope to expand my travels. I am an avid researcher who is driven by a fierce passion for helping populations that are underserved and disadvantaged. My goal in life is simple: Help those in need.

"The drive to be useful is encoded in our genes. However, when we gather in very large numbers, as in the modern nation-state, we seem capable of levels of folly and self-destruction to be found nowhere else in all of nature.
But if we keep at it and keep alive, we are in for one surprise after another. We can build structures for human society never seen before, thoughts never heard before, music never heard before."
- Lewis Thomas

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Website: http://globalbrigades.org


Organization: Global Brigades USA
Program: Medical Brigades

About Us

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a chapter of Global Medical and Dental Brigades, an international movement of students and medical professionals working alongside local communities and staff to implement sustainable health systems. We work in remote, rural, and under resourced communities in Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua and Ghana who would otherwise have limited to no access to health care. Each community receives a brigade every 3 to 4 months where hundreds of patients are provided access to dental & medical care and volunteers deliver public health workshops. Electronic patient records are collected for future visitations and to monitor overall community health trends. In conjunction with our Medical & Dental Programs, Global Brigades also supports communities with economic development, sanitation and clean water projects, and uniquely implements these programs in a holistic model to meet a community’s health and economic goals. Our model systematically builds community ownership and collaboratively executes programs with the end goal of sustainably evolving to a relationship of impact monitoring. To learn more, please visit www.globalbrigades.org.



Upcoming Initiatives

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Medical Brigade May 2025 Panama

Global Brigades offers 7-9 day Medical Brigades throughout the year in Honduras, Panama, Ghana, Guatemala, Greece and Belize. During a Medical Brigade, volunteers have the opportunity to take vitals and patient history in triage, shadow licensed doctors in medical consultations, and assist in a pharmacy under the direction of licensed pharmacists. Each of our partner communities receives a brigade approximately twice a year. Between brigades, our in-country team maintains relationships with the communities to provide follow-up and to conduct Community Health Worker (CHW) trainings to empower local leaders to sustain a consistent level of healthcare. Electronic patient records are collected for future visitations and to monitor overall community health trends.