{"id":79747,"date":"2013-06-24T15:20:53","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T19:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=79747"},"modified":"2013-07-03T09:07:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:07:06","slug":"uconn-student-raises-money-to-buy-books-for-hospital-library-in-ecuador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2013\/06\/uconn-student-raises-money-to-buy-books-for-hospital-library-in-ecuador\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Student Raises Money to Buy Books for Hospital Library in Ecuador"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Doctors<\/a>
Doctors from the Hospital Luis Vernaza in Guayaquil, Ecuador, with University of Connecticut student Sarah Fuller. Fuller raised money to buy medical reference books for a new hospital library. (Photo provided by Sarah Fuller)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Hospital Luis Vernaza, located in Guayaquil, Ecuador, is an 883-bed hospital that lacked round-the-clock medical references until University of Connecticut student Sarah Fuller stepped in.<\/p>\n

Sarah raised $1,500 for books for a new hospital library that would make it possible for doctors to reference books of different specialties at all hours of the day or night.<\/p>\n

To raise the money, Sarah volunteered at the UConn Health Center Emergency Department<\/a>. She says the majority of her sponsors decided on an amount of money they would donate per volunteer hour, and then made the sum donation at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe these books are going to be a fantastic addition to the Hospital Luis Vernaza,\u201d says Dr. Robert Fuller<\/a> who is not only the medical director of the UConn Health Center Emergency Department, but also Sarah\u2019s father. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge hospital with lots of sick patients and there were no books for them to reference \u2014 I was shocked by that. There are things we take for granted here at home, such as the Internet available at our fingertips 24 hours a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarah\u2019s project started her senior year of high school for a class called \u201cGlobal Problem Solving,\u201d but her connection with Ecuador started her freshman year of high school when her family moved there for 10 months.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dad has done a lot of disaster work,\u201d says Sarah. \u201cWe chose Ecuador because it is a medically underserved country, but also a relatively safe place for our family. It was amazing. The people were very friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other than his work at the Hospital Luis Vernaza, Fuller provided medical assistance after the September 11, 2001 attacks and traveled to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.<\/p>\n

Sarah says her father was a role model in her desire to help others in the medical field.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/a>
Dr. Robert Fuller and his daughter Sarah during a trip to Nicaragua with Global Medical Brigades this past winter.
(Photo provided by Sarah Fuller)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s taught me that I can do it. He has always supported me, but I know that I have to be the one to do it. He\u2019s taught me to be independent,\u201d she says. One of the lessons she learned is the vital importance of the contacts that are made and kept.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithout both local and international contacts, this never would have happened,\u201d she says. \u201cI really appreciated all the support for my project; I got a really great response.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her main contact in Ecuador was Dr. Cristian Guarderas, who discussed with Sarah what the hospital was lacking and what resources he thought would be most beneficial.<\/p>\n

\u201cSarah is an example for college students,\u201d says Guarderas. \u201cShe did all the hard work, which took a lot of her time. I helped her choose the medical books in Spanish that made her vision for our hospital a reality. Now that they are available to be read and studied, everyone will benefit from the better medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, Sarah is a physiology and neurobiology major and is interested in pursuing medicine. She is a member of the UConn Storrs branch of the Global Brigades, which focuses on holistic approaches to problems in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just cool to see your daughter put her efforts into something like this,\u201d explains Fuller. \u201cIt sounds like a silly word to use, but it really is cool. It makes me happy and proud to watch Sarah achieve her goals. What\u2019s important to her is not what she looks like, the clothes she\u2019s wearing, or the car she\u2019s driving \u2014 it\u2019s about something bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Follow\u00a0the UConn Health Center<\/a> on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0Twitter<\/a> and\u00a0YouTube<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sarah Fuller\u2019s donation makes it possible for doctors to reference medical books at all hours of the day or night. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":79761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-79747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-health","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 16:17:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79747"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79766,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79747\/revisions\/79766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/79761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79747"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=79747"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=79747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}