Dr. Reina Jenny Gutierrez Rendón is a superhero. Every day, along with her colleagues at Caja Nacional de Salud, she fights to understand and study cardiovascular disease.
Laboratorians may not be visible to patients, but they are at the forefront of the fight against all kinds of diseases. They lead the way in fighting COVID-19, they fight against malaria, and they are our best defense against non-communicable diseases of all kinds — the deadliest of which is cardiovascular disease.
Although Bolivia is home to the Tsimané people, who have the healthiest hearts in the world, cardiovascular diseases still account for 24% of overall mortality in the country.
Dr. Gutierrez Rendón was one of the many participants in the Global Cardiovascular Health Partnership conducted in the Philippines and Bolivia by the Association for Diagnostics & Laboratory Medicine (ADLM, formerly AACC) and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation.
She joined her colleagues from around Bolivia in Santa Cruz for a 2-day workshop on the principles of laboratory quality and point-of-care lipid device use. The workshop was conducted by representatives from the CDC, ADLM, and La Sociedad Boliviana de Bioquímica Clínica (SOBOBIOCLI).
Dr. Gutierrez Rendón took the knowledge she had gained in the workshop back to Sucre and integrated it into the work of her home healthcare institution. She then reached out to her community through a health fair to spread newfound knowledge and share what she gained from attending the workshop.
Such health fairs bring together nongovernmental organizations, government ministries, and health care institutions to raise awareness of health needs and options for community members seeking care.
Dr. Gutierrez Rendón met several patients at the health fair and tested them with the point-of-care lipid testing devices provided by the workshop, ultimately referring patients in need of care to specialists at their local healthcare institutions. Her work facilitating important testing procedures allowed for greater health transparency and increased awareness of these tests, which in turn enabled people to integrate the tests in their communities’ institutions.
In November 2023, Dr. Veronica Luzzi visited with Dr. Gutierrez Rendón in Sucre as a part of the program, and she remarked on how excited Dr. Gutierrez Rendón was about the success of the health fair campaign.
Programs like the Global Cardiovascular Health Partnership go beyond the participants, and help communities with the challenges they face every day.
The activities that occur within Global Affairs at ADLM, of which the CDC Foundation-funded Global Cardiovascular Health Partnership is a part, have been supporting superheroes like Dr. Gutierrez Rendón for 20-plus years and seek to continue this support through externally funded programs, workshops, online initiatives, and regional working groups.