16 The Hearing Journal December 2019 AUDIOLOGY WITHOUT BORDERS S ince 2002, professors of dentistry and speech-language pathology at the University of Sao Paulo, Bauru, have been leading students to provide dental, speech, and audiology services to residents of the Amazonian state of Rondônia in Brazil. The expeditions are direct responses to the National Policy of Education (PNE2001-2010) initiative, the main purposes of which are to train health professionals and provide preventive, educational, and rehabilitative services in Rondônia. The expeditions aim to provide underserved com- munities with access to oral and speech-language health ser- vices, as well as to create holistic training opportunities for students to enhance their technical and social skills and ex- pose them to diverse social, cultural, and economic settings, particularly the socioeconomic realities and health care needs of the populations served. These expeditions also aim to en- courage collaboration with local municipal health managers in addressing the residents’ health care needs, including disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. DENTAL & HEARING CARE FOR AMAZONIAN COMMUNITIES Dental, speech, and hearing health care services are ex- tremely limited in this region of Brazil. We serve two locations during our two-week trips: Monte Negro and Calama. Monte Negro is a small city south of Rondônia’s capital, Porto Velho, with a population of 14,000. About half of the residents live in an urban setting, and the rest stay in rural areas. In 2002, we chose Monte Negro for our first expedition be- cause our university has a research center for tropical diseases, ICB-5, in the city. The mission of ICB-5 is to develop activities and studies related to population health and biodiversity. The center provides us with housing and clinical space so that we can serve the people in Monte Negro and the surrounding com- munities. The campus has four dental offices and three rooms for speech and language evaluations and therapy. Our last trip in July 2019 was the 39 th trip to Monte Negro. We usually spend two weeks in Monte Negro in January and one week there in July. In 2012, we expanded our outreach services to Calama, an Amazonian riverine village north of Porto Velho. It has fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, and is only accessible by boat. There are no oral, speech-language, or hearing health care services in the community, and it recently lost its primary care doctor to the withdrawal of Cuban doctors hired through the Mais Med- icos program. Each one-way trip to Calama takes about 12 hours. During the dry season, we usually travel up the Madeira River on a Saturday night with all of our clinical equipment (e.g., dental chairs and tools for clinical testing and earmold making). From Port Velho, the transfer is a challenging pro- cess since the tools and equipment need to be brought down the port (about four to five stories high) to get to the boat, Faculty-Led Humanitarian Outreach in Brazil By Magali de Lourdes Caldana, PhD; José Roberto de Magalhães Bastos, PhD; Samir Paiva do Espirito Santo; Leticia de Azevedo Leite; Bianca Gonçalves Alvarenga; Tayná Maiara Pilla Rodrigues; and Cristina do Espirito Santo, PhD iStock/beyhanyazar Dr. Caldana is a speech pathologist, an associate professor, and the head of the department of audiology and speech pathology at the University of São Paulo (USP). She is the coordinator of Project FOB USP in Rondônia. Dr. de Magalhães Bastos is a dental surgeon and professor in the department of public health at USP. He is the vice-coordinator of Project FOB USP in Rondônia. Mr. do Espírito Santo is an architect and a graduate student of public health at USP. Ms. de Azevedo Leite is a speech pathologist and a graduate student of public health at USP. Ms. Alvarenga is a speech patholo- gist and a graduate student in hearing and speech pathology at USP. Ms. Rodrigues is a psychologist and a graduate student in hearing and speech pathology at USP. Dr. do Espirito Santo is a speech pathologist at USP’s department of hearing and speech pathology. Figure 1. Students form a line to transport equipment and sup- plies from the boat dock up to the riverine community of Calama.