Mercerians provided medical care to hundreds of orphans and community members with limited access in Guaimaca, Honduras, this summer.
The new Mercer On Mission program was piloted in 2025 and created in collaboration with Lance Slade, M.D., pediatrician at Primary Pediatrics in Macon. Slade and his family have worked with and supported Orphanage Emmanuel and the Guaimaca community for many years.
Mercer professors Patsy Butts, Ed.D., and Chinekwu Obidoa, Ph.D., led six global health studies undergraduate students, eight nursing students and four medical students on the two-week trip in July. Slade; School of Medicine Associate Professor John Henderson, M.D.; Hannah Batten, M.D.; Tony Farmer, M.D.; Jacob Kirkpatrick, M.D., helped oversee the medical work, and additional volunteers recruited by Slade joined the Mercer team throughout the trip.
“(The program) was a great opportunity for students to practice skills and empathy,” said Obidoa, professor of global health studies. “Mercer On Mission is supposed to be this outfit that allows students to engage in the transformational aspect of their schooling. This opportunity went exactly into that. There was personal growth, and there was professional growth.”
Slade said he and his wife, Toni, have worked with Orphanage Emmanuel and the Guaimaca community since 2014 and adopted their son, Henson, from there in 2017. A family of Bears, Slade completed his pediatric residency at Mercer School of Medicine, and their son, Spencer, and his wife just started medical school in Columbus. Toni and Henson earned bachelor’s degrees at Mercer, and Henson is currently working on his MBA.
Woodland Coffee Roasters, the Slades’ coffee shop in Warner Robins, supports Orphanage Emmanuel through job training and fundraising, and they travel to the area every summer to do medical mission work and every fall for coffee planting. The new Mercer On Mission program allowed them to expand their service to the community and make it more sustainable, and the most recent trip marked their 26th visit.
“We have just been blown away by people’s support,” Lance Slade said. “The orphanage is very dear to us. There’s a huge need, and I think Mercer can provide a ton for that. It’s a great opportunity to see more kids get better care. We love those kids like our own. Mercer is in our blood, as is our orphanage, and seeing the two of them get married together (through this program), that’s what means a lot. We’re thankful that people believe in it.”
Orphanage Emmanuel recently lost its on-site medical staff, creating challenges for providing routine and preventative healthcare for the 200-plus orphans living there, Butts said. So, a large portion of the Mercer On Mission trip was devoted to conducting annual physicals on all residents — from 2-month-old babies to young adults with special needs — and treating acute medical issues, Obidoa said.
“They did assessments and identification of problems that needed further diagnostics, and they did screenings for vision and hearing,” said Butts, clinical assistant professor in the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing. “The children speak Spanish, so we really had to work hard to be able to communicate. So (the Mercer students) learned a lot of Spanish while they were there as well about cultural differences, health disparities and social determinants of health. It was a very rich learning environment.”
The Mercerians created charts for each child and translated the orphanage’s medical records to Spanish to help it meet new government regulations. They also provided and set up telehealth devices at the orphanage, providing a link back to Mercer for ongoing healthcare needs, Butts said.
In addition, students delivered health education lessons related to oral health, hygiene, infection control, puberty and mental health to the children and teens. The Mercerians also hosted a two-day medical clinic for community members at a local church.
At the start of the trip, the global health students were paired with medical and nursing students to learn how to measure vital signs and conduct various health screenings. By the end of the two weeks, they had all gained practical experience in these skills, Butts said. In addition, the nursing students were able to log some of their required clinical hours through this work.
Slade said the experience gave the Mercer students a taste of medicine while broadening their horizons on how they can use their medical skills to show love and care to others.
“They’re still learning to do medicine but doing it in a way that creates life change. It creates and changes lives back at Mercer too. I’d love (the program) to keep happening and growing,” he said.
Ria Tamrakar, CLAS ’28, said the trip allowed her to forge connections with medical professionals as well as students on other Mercer campuses that she probably wouldn’t have met otherwise.
“My overall goal is to be a pediatrician one day, and this trip was the perfect mix of all my interests and disciplines. We got to work at Emmanuel orphanage for two weeks in a medical capacity and hang out with the kids,” said Tamrakar, a global health studies and Spanish double-major. “I gained Spanish skills, clinical skills and a desire to go back. We can all say we came back a different person on this trip. I gained some lifelong friendships.”
Isaiah Bohn, MED ’29, regularly teaches CPR to local community members in Savannah and helped train orphanage staff after discovering a need for it there.
“It was great to be immersed in a new culture. I got to practice a lot of medical skills, a lot of Spanish skills and have a rewarding experience overall,” said Bohn, a student on the Savannah campus. “It’s so easy to get caught up in the books, but it’s nice to get some real hands-on experience and help someone else out.”
The Mercer team also did odd jobs around the orphanage campus, including painting road curbs, repairing the playground, pulling weeds and cleaning chicken coops. When they weren’t working, they spent as much time as they could with the children and shared meals with them, Butts said. They played soccer and dodgeball with them, took them out for ice cream, and brought them special treats.
“They were the most well-behaved, engaged, self-independent students I’d ever seen,” Butts said of the Mercer students. “They were awesome. They had a hard time leaving the kids. They really did love the kids, and the kids really loved them.”
