EP2. Givens Goes Global for U.K Health Perspectives

Reese Givens, a young adult, had a strong desire to travel abroad but was hesitant due to anxiety and being away from her family. After her father passed away, she decided to take a chance and participate in a two-week study abroad program in the UK. The program focused on comparing healthcare systems between the US and UK, with an emphasis on history and public health. Reese learned about the differences in healthcare access and the intentional approach to community health in the UK. This experience opened her eyes to the flaws in the US healthcare system and inspired her to make a difference in her future career. The trip also allowed her to explore the beautiful landscapes of Scotland and appreciate the similarities and differences among cultures. Overall, the trip was not only educational but also character-building for Reese and her roommate Blakely. Life is too short not to travel. You shouldn't spend your life just in one place, because there is always a home to go back to, but there are millions of places to explore, the RDC travel blog once said. For Reese Givens, this rings especially true. Like many young adults, she was itching and craving for the thrill of traveling internationally, more specifically studying abroad. At the same time, the anxiety and nerves were overwhelming when she considered being gone from her tight-knit family for an entire summer or semester, that it may not be what she imagined or beyond what she could handle without the comfort of her mom and dad there for every step of the way. And then she learned about a two-week study abroad program, what would be the perfect length of time and destination for a novice traveler. After all, who doesn't dream of traveling to the UK, the mother country? Unfortunately and grievously, Reese would very soon have to endure battling through the most excruciating sorrow that a young woman of 22 can experience. Yet it just might have been the nudging factor that eventually sent her airborne across the Atlantic. I was like, OK, don't think anything about it. My dad passed away the next day. A month later, I came back around to the trip and was like, oh, I should do this. My dad pushed me to do it. So I was like, I'll just take a chance to do it. So in the midsummer heat of July 2023, Reese took the chance and wistfully went to the continent her father always longed to visit, even if he wasn't physically there to watch her cross the pond. Although many may be of the opinion that he was certainly there with a reaffirming, proud and gentle hand leading her the entire way. Welcome back to Transformative Travel, a podcast where we delve into the life-changing places, experiences and impacts of traveling in your 20s. I'm your host, Alyssa Riley, and this is Episode 2, Givens Goes Global for UK Health Perspectives. Givens Goes Global and Historical Perspectives of Health is a University of Arkansas Hogs Abroad program. Designed to compare and contrast U.S. health care with that of the U.K. and Glasgow, Scotland and London, England, Reese and her fellow travelers were half-led by nursing clinical instructor and health and promotion and maternal child, Professor Emily Richardson. While hopping between Westminster Abbey, British Museums, the River Thames and the magnificent countryside castles, they learned about how different countries apply, promote and restore community health concepts, as well as the history of nursing and health care. The trip that we went on, I actually helped develop when I was a graduate assistant in 2014. There are various ways to provide health care to a population, right? The social-based model would focus more on preventative care and access to resources to prevent illness, create more of a healthy lifestyle for people to where we would increase barriers that would have negative health impacts. So we're making it easier for you to walk to work and harder for you to drive, so that you're choosing exercise, decreased car emissions, that kind of thing. The physical model of health, which tends to be what we have in the U.S., it's going to vary by state, is more focused on treatment. We do a lot more focus on illness and treating illness and providing care that has high-quality intervention but isn't as strong on prevention. Ten years ago, she developed this trip for the purpose of exposing students, the next generation of health care providers, to a social model system. Yet the program is open to all majors, hence why Reese, a public health major, and her roommate, Blakely Kresel, a journalism major, were in attendance. I originally came into college on the pre-med psychology track, wanting to be a psychiatrist and then realizing I didn't want to go to school for a really long time. So I changed to public health. I was like, why not? It seems cool. And it has a good schedule. I feel like it's an in into the medical field without having gone to medical school. Another thing, too, is the historical aspect of it. So how has public health developed over time and how has nursing developed over time? So public health and nursing, with Florence Nightingale and John, were both founded in London. That's the precipice of their development. So there's a lot of history in medicine. Someone who is very intrigued by history, that part of the trip was the most fascinating for Blakely. I love history. My sister is a history major. My dad is super into history. So I knew a good amount about English and the United Kingdom, Great Britain, Great Britain history in general. And the trip was history of public health in the U.K. So I was like, okay, that's really cool, combining two things that I'm interested in. We had a tour guide who was this very, very knowledgeable historian on public health in the U.K. So it was very interesting. And we basically would get up in the morning at 7 and we would get outside and then we would go on a subway to some meeting point with this guy. From there, we would walk miles and miles throughout the entire day. And he would show us landmarks that explain the history of the public health state, like old sewage systems and old water pumps, old buildings that used to house soldiers. You know, people say that learning in a textbook and then learning in real life, actually seeing the things, being able to visualize it, you're retaining. Yeah, for sure. I feel like the aspect of the walking and hearing the information at the same time and seeing it with your own eyes was very, very educational. It was a new ounce of understanding. For Reese, her biggest lesson from the trip was more public health-based, realizing that she would eventually like to utilize the things she learned in her future career once her time at the University of Arkansas comes to a close. My biggest takeaway was honestly realizing how different people do in their health care systems and almost how bad ours is right now. It's a very big culture shock to realize we really don't have access to health care for a lot of people. If we do, you have to have insurance, which can be expensive. And then if you don't have insurance, medical expenses are even more expensive. So actually stepping back and realizing that health care is not universal and it's not the same everywhere. They're a lot more intentional on their built environment. So the whole way that they develop their cities, their communities, is a lot more intentionality. For example, if you have NHS, they will provide a bicycle for you so that you are encouraged to commute using a bicycle and you are contributing to more environmental health because there's decreased pollution. You're also getting exercise, so that's better for you. NHS stands for National Health Services, which is the U.K.'s health insurer. As Professor Richardson puts it, their government is their insurer. They truly think that it's their privilege to serve the world in this way and that it is a human right and therefore we shouldn't make people pay when they're receiving care. My future career, it's really opened my eyes. I don't have the biggest push for the way that our medical system is ran, but I still have such an enjoyment and love in medical history and helping people in that sense. So I learned a lot from my trip to possibly help and bring over things that I learned from there. I love, love, love taking students out of the U.S. for them to see that the way that we live is a way to live, not necessarily the way to live. And that there are beautiful things from every culture that we can glean and take with us. It gets us out of our comfort zone to be comfortable, and the uncomfortable is a character skill, right? As we step into the workplace, as we're serving others, there's going to be times when we're uncomfortable, and we have to be okay with that. Despite the great importance of teaching about the health perspectives and history of the U.K., there was so much more to take away from this trip, to one day remember when best friends Reese and Blakely are old and graying, reminiscing on their days at uni, as the British say. What would you say was your favorite part? On our free day, me and Blakely went to Edinburgh, and we took a day trip throughout the highlands of Scotland and saw the Three Sisters of the Bone Crow and all the mountains out there. I tell so many people about that, and it's so beautiful. People need to go and do that. I saw a lot of really big places that had been filmed, like where Harry Potter, the Haggard Cut, and James Bond movies were filmed. It was very surreal seeing that beautiful nature there. I really enjoyed it. It was very meditative for me. I felt like I could take a deep breath, and I could really sink into the place. I just felt so good being there, and that was something that I had dreamed about. Professor Richardson, while discussing Reese, said she was excited to embrace the culture. I know that she wanted to do afternoon teas and visit different things in Scotland. Because if you stay with your group, it's going to be kind of an echo chamber, right? Like a dysphoria. Do you feel like that opens yourself up more to the trip, and that you had a better experience because of that? I definitely think that it did. Just because I was able to talk to so many different people, and also people that weren't technically locals, they didn't grow up and live there. So I met a lot of people from a lot of different places. It forces you to try new foods. It forces you to see that there's a lot of similarities within humanity. I think it's really effective in dismantling stigmas and bias. You meet people, and you're like, oh, they're not actually much different than I am, or, oh gosh, they're significantly kinder than I thought that they would be. There's a lot of character building that goes into it. You get to step out and do something a little more bold. For Reese, this trip meant so much more than exploring foreign lands, learning about the history of U.K. health, and seeing where Hagrid's hut was filmed in the Harry Potter movies. No, with her guardian angel on her shoulder, this trip meant taking a giant leap of faith, both for herself and for her father. I think how it impacted my life was my dad wanting me to go on this trip and then doing it, and just feeling like I had almost succeeded in a way because he wanted me to do it, but he wasn't able to be here to see me do it. But I just did it. Travel is more than the seeing of sights. It is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the minds of the living. Thank you for listening to Givens Goes Global for U.K. Health Perspectives, Episode 2 of the Transformative Travel Podcast. I'm your host, Alyssa Riley, and you can catch me next time for Episode 3, where we will explore the fascinating story of 21-year-old Sarah Godfrey, who has traveled to dozens upon dozens of countries and spent time studying in the beautiful Scotland countryside. See you next time. Transcription by CastingWords