A Public Health Brigade takes a holistic and preventative approach to health issues in Honduras by pairing health education with basic in-home construction projects. Some of the most prevalent health issues in the communities Public Health Brigades works in can be lowered by the combination of these two elements. Below are the components that make up a Public Health Brigade:

1. Education
2. Community Health Sustainability
3. Infrastructural Improvements

1. Education

Public Health Brigades promote preventative strategies to improve quality of life and prevent life-threatening diseases by means of short health classes in the schools and working in strong partnership with teachers within the community. The Public Health Brigades team has worked with community teachers to identify important subjects for brigaders to help teach to community members. Each month in the year has a special topic that will be focused on. Brigade volunteers will work with community teachers to teach a workshop pertaining to the topic of the month they participate in their public health brigade.

2. Community Health Sustainability

The Public Health Brigades team ensures that there is training and empowerment of local community leaders in the formation of the Committee of Basic Sanitation (Comite de Saneamiento Basico) and the Water Committees (Junta de Agua), to act as long term, sustainable solutions to the maintenance of a healthy community. The Basic Sanitation Committees are groups of community members who have received extensive training from GB staff and learn a curriculum developed by UNICEF that explains simple disease prevention measures that the committee shares with the rest of the community through a series of home visits.

3. Infrastructural Development:

This component of the public health brigades focuses on improving the families’ health and standard of living by changing the conditions where they live. During brigades, in teams of 3-4, volunteers work with the guidance of a public health staff member to build either a latrine, pila (water storage unit), eco-stove, or concrete floors. Each evening of the brigade, staff members review the steps to completing projects with volunteers and are always on hand to help oversee the actual construction. During this element of the brigade, there is labor involved, although anyone can take part regardless of expertise.

Concrete Floors: Presently, 7-10 million people in Latin America are infected with Chagas disease. This potentially fatal disease is spread by insects that borrow into the ground and bite people while they are sitting or sleeping on mud floors. The concrete floors that Public Health Brigades constructs prevents these bugs from borrowing into the floor, thus preventing much of the spread of Chagas disease. The concrete floors also provide a much cleaner living environment for families, who are able to clean them easily with water.

Eco-stoves: Respiratory problems are a major health concern in Honduras. Family members currently cook over open flames in poorly ventilated rooms, which lead to the inhalation of smoke, eye irritation, and other health problems. The majority of rural families use wood burning—without chimneys—for all their daily cooking. First, our stove design includes a chimney, which significantly reduces pulmonary illness. Additionally, the clean-burning stoves reduces the daily wood used from 30 pieces of wood to 8. This dramatically reduces the work load of the families and helps to prevent global warming and deceases deforestation (since 1990, Honduras has lost 30.1% of its forests and woodlands.)

Latrines: The lack of proper sanitary facilities in many rural homes causes the spread of infectious disease and parasites by entering the water sources. Diarrheal disease, in particular which is often spread through poor sanitary conditions, kills 4.5 million children yearly.

Pilas (water storage unit): Many rural communities do not receive water on a consistent basis; the pila ensures that they have the ability to practice good personal hygiene and sanitation, such as washing their dishes, hands, clothes, and children.