Marquette Nursing students use research, community service to fight for women’s health
By Andrew Goldstein | Marketing Communications Specialist
College of Nursing students are committed to using their skills to care for vulnerable populations. That includes marginalized women. Some students are going above and beyond in this mission, contributing to women’s well-being outside the health care environment.
HYGIENE DRIVE FOR HER
Health. Empowerment. Resilience.
Those three words came to mind when junior nursing major Imunique Triplett thought about the difference she wanted to make in the world. When it came time to name the women’s health organization she founded, it was simple: the acronym HER.
“I’ve had a passion for women’s health ever since senior year of high school and I knew I wanted to get into a field where I could have an impact on it,” Triplett says.
Rising senior Imunique Triplett helped organize a feminine hygienic products drive.
While Triplett is intent on becoming a labor and delivery nurse, she also didn’t want to wait until she was a professional to start solving problems related to women’s health. That passion led to HER’s feminine hygiene drive, through which the organization seeks donations from faculty, staff and fellow students to stock women’s hygiene products in bathrooms across campus.
Triplett and Dani Hart, a psychology major and the organization’s vice president, noticed these products aren’t always available, particularly for students who come from underrepresented backgrounds.
LEADING THE FIGHT AGAINST HIV
Junior Emily Loomis learned in her clinical rotations that there’s much more to a patient than meets the eye. Truly understanding them requires knowing them more deeply.
“You have to dig deep into their history and think about what specific things they are dealing with to deliver trauma-informed care,” Loomis says.
That philosophy influences her approach to a research project to improve access to PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, to prevent HIV among sex workers, a project that she is working on in collaboration with Assistant Professor Dr. Jessica Zemlak. PrEP is a medicine that people who are at high risk of HIV exposure take at regular intervals to lessen their risk. However, many of the women who need it are not sure of where to get it or how to use it most effectively.
“I’ve met with women to create infographics to provide information on what PrEP is and how they can receive PrEP care,” Loomis says. “They were able to provide a relatable way to communicate to others how best to take care of their own health.”
Loomis, who is in the disciplinary honors program, works in collaboration with both Dr. Zemlak and the Benedict Center, a nonprofit organization that helps women impacted by the criminal justice system. The project is the latest example of Marquette Nursing’s focus on community-engaged research, in which researchers partner with members of the population they are hoping to study.
The populations involved in this study often face barriers to engaging in healthcare related to factors such as lacking transportation and experiences of stigma. Meeting women with healthcare services in a trusted community setting where they feel safe has made PrEP feel much more accessible. According to Loomis, their outreach has significantly increased awareness and understanding of this life-saving medication.
“This has been an amazing education in how you need to think of people’s personal lives and what they may be going through in order to reach them,” Loomis says.
“Some students are just trying to get by, and if they don’t have access to a cheap source of sanitary pads, it can create a lot of stress in their lives,” Hart says.
The two students collected enough sanitary supplies to fully stock the bathrooms in Coughlin Hall and are now doing the same for Straz Hall. Their ultimate goal is to collect enough to keep campus stocked.
The Marquette Nursing curriculum teaches students the concept of social determinants of health, the idea that an individual’s health is directly tied to socioeconomic factors. This has inspired many nursing students to undertake public health efforts on broad topics from the environment to safe firearm usage.
“Marquette has done a great job of bringing our attention to different injustices that are going on within health care and I think it’s important for me to take that extra step from just educating myself to doing something about it,” Triplett says.