With a global focus: Mexican professor supports rural health in Nepal

Dr. Rebeca Leyva Rico, a professor at Tec de Monterrey Guadalajara, led an international stay in Nepal as part of a partnership with the U21 university network to support a hospital in the Himalayas with multidisciplinary teams.

Although she works as a nutritionist at her clinic in Guadalajara, where she’s also Director of the Integrative Nutrition and Wellness program on the Guadalajara campus, she traveled to the mountains of Nepal in March to help rural communities there.

Leyva participated in the Global Learning Partnership (GLP), a program that brings together healthcare students to implement comprehensive healthcare programs for Salambu residents.

“They were genuinely happy people,” said Leyva of the members of the mountain community where she worked for two weeks alongside 21 students from universities around the world and three other professors.

Tec participating through the U21 program

The program Leyva participated in is one of the initiatives from Universitas 21 (U21), a group of universities that, among other things, works primarily on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

These are a set of 17 global goals developed by the UN, which include eradicating poverty, creating sustainable communities, and achieving gender equality, among other things. 

As part of U21, Tec de Monterrey participates in various projects focused on these goals, from research to doctoral forums. 

In August 2024, Leyva won the U21 Teaching Excellence Award in Sciences. 

Since she was part of this network of universities, Leyva applied to travel to Nepal as a GLP professor. 

“As well as my dedication to attending patients, I’ve always understood from a micro perspective that we also need to address the macro aspect,” Leyva said, explaining how her passion for public health led her to joining the team in Nepal.

Although she arrived armed with her nutritional expertise, one of the first challenges she faced was diet and calculating the amount of protein in their vegetarian meals.

“I would look at a dish and say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never eaten this before,’” Leyva recalled.

Interventions based on real needs

The program followed a structured four-week approach, the academic said.

Her first week was dedicated to theoretical preparation at Kathmandu University, followed by a week of community assessment in the mountains.

The third week was for intervention implementation, and finally, the results were presented to Dhulikhel Hospital.

In Salambu, a community located 4.5 hours along a winding mountain road from the capital, multidisciplinary teams identified health problems specific to the area. 

Among the most significant findings were cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) caused by exposure to wood smoke. 

Nearly a quarter of Nepal’s population suffers from COPD, especially in the country’s rural communities.

Her other intervention dealt with postural problems resulting from carrying heavy objects over long distances in mountainous terrain.

“We carried out health assessments, and they have health issues associated with poor posture, due to the way they carry weight and the kilometers they walk in the mountains,” Leyva explains.

Interventions included COPD education sessions, physiotherapy workshops focused on postural problems, and dental hygiene programs for children at their schools.

"We could integrate it so that this can be a program serving communities around, for example, the Guadalajara campus. We don’t need to go to Nepal.” - Rebeca Leyva

Lasting impact and future plans

The program has a follow-up component via Kathmandu University, which sends students every semester to continue the interventions. 

What’s more, the international team returns to the hospital every year and has the opportunity to assess progress in the communities involved.
 

The experience has inspired Leyva to explore the possibility of replicating this model in Mexico.

“We could integrate it so that this can be a program serving communities around, for example, the Guadalajara campus. We don’t need to go to Nepal,” she reflected.

According to Leyva, her experience in Nepal demonstrated that academia is the same everywhere, and that health professionals share a universal vocation of service, regardless of their cultural and geographical differences.

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