Student Experiential Learning: Meet Georgia Bromley

A short amount of time in the Dominican Republic made a big impact on Georgia Bromley ’25. Thanks to a College of Health study abroad grant, Bromley traveled to Santiago for two-and-a-half weeks for Lehigh in the Dominican Republic, a partnership with PUCMM (Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra). This health-focused program was a great fit for Bromley, a population health major with a deep interest in epidemiology.

During her time in the DR, Bromley took a class on the eco-social perspectives of health and had multiple opportunities for community engagement. She stayed with a host family and visited both public and private hospitals. Lehigh students worked with the Mama Chen Primary Care Center, which serves the Mama Chen community. They were tasked with finding an issue that was prevalent in the community and creating an intervention to address that issue. 

After home visits with community members, Bromley’s team decided to tackle diabetes. “We created an exercise intervention program which basically educated very young students in elementary schools about the importance of exercise” in order to prevent diabetes, she said. Her team presented their program to the college, the health center, and to local elementary schools.   

The Mama Chen Primary Care Center serves people from all economic backgrounds. A visit to a remote community brought health disparities to the forefront. Community members have less access to health care due to how hard it is to get to the health center. “It was so evident how the social determinants of health completely interact with how people were living,” she said. 

Making connections with others was a highlight of the program for Bromley. The children in the Dominican Republic were interested to see people they had never seen before, and wanted to learn about Americans, Bromley said. 

The program also brought her close to her fellow students from Lehigh. “I knew nobody on the trip going into it,” she said. “Now I have 20 more friends that I see around campus, and I love to see them.”