by Jeff Bendix

Diane Dickerson got started on her life path from watching a television commercial. As a child, Dickerson said she was moved by commercials, showing pictures of children dying of starvation and diseases in third-world nations, for the "Save the Children" fund.

"I was appalled at the thought that children were dying of all these diseases, and from that point on I knew I wanted to be a doctor or a nurse," she said. "I chose nursing because of the opportunities for health promotion and disease prevention."

On May 18 Dickerson, a native of Aurora, Ohio, will take another big step in her chosen career when she receives her master's degree with a specialty in community health nursing from CWRU's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing.

Dickerson began putting her career ambition into action after graduating from Ohio State University with a bachelor's degree in nursing. She enlisted in the Peace Corps, where she spent two and a half years as a community health nurse in the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican Republic she lived in an impoverished rural village without running water that was hours from the nearest paved road.

"Most of my work was with teen-agers, providing education about AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases," she said. "We would train kids there to talk to their peers about these diseases and how to prevent them. We found that peer-to-peer training worked better than having foreigners telling them what they should be doing."

As the clinical component of her Bolton School degree, Dickerson conducted an assessment of measles immunization in East Cleveland, a community that has struggled with low rates of childhood immunizations of all kinds.

In concert with the Cleveland chapter of the Red Cross and University Hospitals Health Systems, she developed posters and pamphlets for distribution to daycare centers and schools warning parents of the dangers of not having their children vaccinated against the disease. The last two Sundays in May will be "measles Sundays," when residents can bring their children to several East Cleveland churches to have them immunized.

After graduation Dickerson plans to take a position with the American Red Cross as a "health delegate," acting as the Red Cross's representative in assisting health programs in other countries.

"I'd like to go somewhere in Latin America, so I don't lose my Spanish," she laughed.

Her chosen career path is at once rewarding and frustrating, she admitted.

"At times I get frustrated with the lack of resources and to see the disparity between terrible poverty and great wealth in a place like the Dominican Republic," she said. "But there's also a sense of satisfaction in feeling like I'm making my own path for what I'm doing. Other students come up to me all the time and ask how they can do what I'm doing. I guess I've become a resource."

Despite the difficulties, Dickerson said she has no regrets about her chosen path.

"If you've got to work for a living, you might as well do something that helps other people," she said.

 

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