Kara Suarez

Biography

A six-plus hour bus ride from Accra, Ghana, in the hottest, most humid time of the year, at the hottest part of the day, across vast plains, past fields of mango trees, through tiny villages and one broken fan belt, along dense hillsides, and finally up a mountain, and Kara Suarez felt … invigorated.

Suarez, a member of the MSN (Entry into Nursing) program, had signed up for the trip through the Center for Global Initiatives (CGI), where she’s also an intern, with previous experience in such health missions, having been to Guatemala with a group from JHSON. She’d seen a tight band of nurse leaders and students provide excellent, holistic care in under-resourced areas before.

This was somehow another world altogether. Beneath a long, open-sided tent, a community was being seen, heard, treated, even healed, but on a scale that blew Suarez’s mind. The volunteer team of caregivers included MSN, PhD, and CRNA students, plus nurse practitioners, mental health and women’s health consultants, and midwives, as well as wound-care specialists. “I didn’t expect us to have such an interprofessional, collaborative health care team. I don’t know how [Professor Yvonne Commodore-Mensah] did that, but she just created a powerhouse of a team to travel to this mountainous region.”

Learn more about Kara Suarez’s journey to the MSN (Entry into Nursing) program.