Professor takes grassroots health care to the world

Baumann trains nurses in developing nations, leads local exercisers

Nineteenth century medical administrator Oliver Wendell Holmes famously observed in the 1850s that sometimes we sail with the wind and sometimes against it.

However, he emphasized that whatever our conditions, “We must sail, not drift, nor lie at anchor.”

Linda Baumann, a modern member of the nursing community, has taken those words to heart, literally and figuratively. A professor of nursing, she also is a master sailor in charge of the spinnaker on her 25-foot Kirby sailboat “Annie Allen,” named for the former skipper’s nanny. For the last 25 years, Baumann and her three teammates have raced several times a week in the summer with the Mendota Yacht Club.

Baumann says she hopes they will continue to put in at least 25 more years before the mast: “I wanted a sport that I could keep doing my whole life,” she says, and indeed, one of the crew is fully active at the age of 89.

“She taught me to do what you love to do until the end of your life,” Baumann says.

Sailing also has brought home important lessons about tenacity and teamwork, principles that Baumann uses every day.

Her work in nurses’ training in developing nations — also of more than 20 years’ standing — has taken her to Kenya, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba, Uganda and Vietnam. In Vietnam alone, she has reached hundreds of nurses during the past 15 years.

“It may not seem that one project can make a difference, but if you take a long view and are committed to the people, the impact quickly becomes evident,” she says. “When I go to Vietnam now, I often meet faculty who might have attended our courses 10 years ago. They describe how they’ve applied what they learned in our courses. Many of our former students today hold management and leadership positions in government and in health-care facilities across the country.”

Baumann continues to work with the Vietnam Nurses Association in providing post-graduate training in disease management skills.

“Diabetes, for example, is increasingly rapidly in the population as the Vietnamese population relies more on automobiles, motorbikes and Western food,” she says.

However, the essence of teamwork is completing a task using members’ individual strengths. There is no one de facto teacher: All learn from each other.

In Cuba, for example, Baumann and her students witnessed firsthand the success of a health-care system very different from the American model.

“Cuba has universal health care access for all its people. The system relies on primary care physicians and nurses. There, we saw how a poor country can achieve impressive health statistics, even in rural areas: low infant mortality, and health-care centers located in neighborhoods that serve everyone who lives in that geographic area,” Baumann says.

Such a grassroots approach appeals greatly to her, she says, and she has put a grassroots initiative into effect in her own community. For the last three years, she has led a weekly exercise group for her neighbors on Madison’s south side, an effort that received the Chancellor’s Award for Academic Community Partnership last year.

“It’s a simple format,” Baumann says. “First we walk for 30 minutes. Then we have a discussion, in both English and Spanish, about a health topic.

“Last year the group met on Saturday, and the day of that big snowstorm in January, I wondered if anyone would show up for the class. I was delighted when they did — it showed how important the class was to them.

“It’s certainly important to me. It makes me feel like I’m part of the community. I work with a team of dedicated and competent student volunteers from health-science schools. We are all enriched by our work with the community, and in making the world a better place.

“Besides, when I meet my neighbors on the street we automatically have something to talk about!”