When Maddison Jansen, a recent graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, was pondering what to do for her honors thesis last year, she knew she wanted to do something different – something that would go beyond academics and make a difference. She’d noticed that even though students pour hours of time into their thesis papers, often no measurable changes are seen as a result.
In the spring of 2015, Jansen decided to do her undergraduate thesis about the health campaigns conducted during the Ebola outbreak crisis in Africa. She then thought of a way she could incorporate the actual helping of others into her thesis – by collecting medicine pill bottles.
Maddison Jansen experiences overwhelming pill bottle donations.
While first-world nations throw away perfectly good medicine bottles, medical pharmacies and hospital facilities in other countries often find themselves with nothing except pieces of paper in which to wrap medicine for their patients. Protected by just paper, the medicine can easily be ruined by water or accidentally accessed by children.
Fast-forward a little over a year and Jansen’s room at home in Lynnville is now the holding place for over 3,000 pill bottles.
“In the beginning, my goal was 500,” Jansen said. “It just exploded.”
Jansen said 1st State Bank in Sully, where her mom Darci works, was her biggest collection site. She also received pill bottles through spreading the word on Facebook and through a health class professor who gathered bottles from students.
With her pill bottle collection drive well underway, Jansen turned in her thesis in early November 2015. Her professor, who specializes in world crisis management, appreciated how Jansen made her thesis applicable.
“He had yet to work on a thesis that had this ‘boots-on-the-ground’ emphasis,” Jansen said.
A wrinkle in her plan came a few months after turning in the thesis. Originally, Jansen thought the bottles would go to a program called Medicine Bottles For Malawi. Unfortunately, Jansen found out in February the program had been cut.
Devastated and wondering what she would do with the thousands of bottles already collected, Jansen was happy to learn of Matthew 25 Ministries. Based out of Cincinnati, OH, Matthew 25 Ministries also collects pill bottles and utilizes rural health initiative partners to distribute the bottles throughout the U.S.
Jansen is no longer accepting pill bottles. Since graduating from UNI on May 7, she has spent her extra time removing labels from the pill bottles and then boiling/sanitizing them. She is only able to send in child-safe bottles, so of the 3,000-plus bottles she received, 2,100 are useable, Jansen explained.
On top of cleaning the bottles, Jansen is also working at Oakland Acres Golf Club near Grinnell. A public relations and political science major, she plans to take a year off from school before hopefully beginning graduate school, where she plans to study health communications. If Jansen has anything to say about it, the pill bottle drive won’t be the last time she helps make a difference in the health field.
