Magazine spotlights Cindy Alexander

Posted on Jun 03, 2007

Excerpt From Monitor on Psychology
Volume 37, No. 11 December 2006
APA Online

Donating their time
Print version: page 40

Among the nearly 100 million Americans who volunteer each year are many psychologists. Read on to learn about psychologists and a psychology student who are making a difference in their communities and around the world.

Cynthia Alexander. In 2003, Alexander found herself in a potato field in rural Kenya, measuring off the land that would become the foundation of a new medical clinic. The clinic, opened in January 2005, is the culmination of years of fund-raising and efforts by Alexander, a second-year doctoral student in clinical psychology at Catholic University, and her friend Poppy Buchanan.

The story began in 1999 when Buchanan, a nurse, was visiting medical missionary friends in Kenya and met nurse-midwife Susan Kaburu, who told Buchanan that her clinic needed basic medical supplies, including an x-ray machine and ambulance. When Buchanan came home she recruited Alexander to help raise money to buy the equipment, and two years later the friends delivered all of the supplies to Kaburu.

Soon after, when Kaburu decided to move back to her home village in rural Kenya, Buchanan and Alexander pledged to help her build a clinic in the medically underserved area.

Now, Kaburu and one other nurse at the clinic see thousands of patients each year, helping with everything from tuberculosis and AIDS to childbirth. Alexander and Buchanan have visited her six times in the past three years.

“Everything we do has flowed from our relationship with Susan and the other people there,” Alexander says. “They know what they need, and our role is to find out what they need and then get the obstacles out of their way.”

Alexander, who worked as an attorney for the Department of Justice for many years before entering graduate school in psychology, says that for now her work in Kenya and her psychology studies remain separate. However, she says she hopes to someday study mental health attitudes in the country. “Right now there’s not a lot of mental health care there,” she says.