USAD is a tagalog word which means movement, development, or progress
THE BEGINNING OF CHANGE
The Journey towards BAG-ONG BALANGAO- Gikan sa katawhan, Para sa katawhan (NEW BALANGAO 2016- From the people, For the people).
Community Survey
IThe survey was conducted among the seven (7) puroks of Barangay Balangao, Municipality of Diplahan, Province of Zamboanga Sibugay. Total respondents summed up to 1824 individuals from 2147 population and 374 households from 403 total households, creating a total of 93% coverage done for the households and 85% of the total population.
Community Fun Day!
All the efforts put into by the medical students are geared towards developing a self reliant community, and to achieve such, training and supervision must be offered to the community people. And one best way to do it is to let the people realize the existence of the problems and let them decide on the course of action or actions to take hence, the Community Assembly.
After listing, prioritizing and understanding the existence of the community problems, the core group together with the medical students sent out invitation for the said activity. This was called for the purpose of soliciting solutions from the people knowing that this strategy would bring about cooperation and sustainability. The medical students utilized a form of group discussion to prevent dominance of certain members and to encourage the contributions of each one.
We started the program through fun games!
Core Group Meeting
Before conducting the Community Assembly, a Core Group Meeting was called which comprised of the Local Barangay Officials, Purok Leaders, and the Barangay Health Workers together with some religious leaders. The Core Group members will serve as the main leaders and representative of the whole community and that it will signify that the Core Group Team called out for the Community Assembly, thus, they are the ones who initiated actions to overcome the problems. During the said meeting, the medical students presented the data to them through the form of graphs and tables with implications explained. After which, the Barangay Captain stood up and led the people in identifying and listing all the problems based on the collated data. 10 problems were identified
Blood Pressure Check-up
Preliminary Assessment for Hypertensive individuals was done through house-to-house BP monitoring and through Community gatherings.