Category Archives: Global Health Education

Nutrition Education in India

“Hi! My name is Emily and I’m a rising sophomore in the Chemistry department at Princeton University. I’m also hoping to pursue certificates in Neuroscience and Consort Singing. I;m currently interning at CFHI to further my knowledge of public health, as it has always been a passion of mine outside of the classroom. As a pre-med student, my work with CFHI India has been of interest to me, and I greatly enjoyed writing this op-ed about nutrition in India. I hope you are able to get a glimpse of how healthcare and nutrition differs in India.”

Preventable diseases such as nutritional anemia, undernutrition, and obesity are a large burden on India’s adolescent population and healthcare system. Paradoxically, nutrition education is disproportionately lacking and is in dire need of improvement. Nutritional anemia affects almost 90% of poor children, adolescent girls, and women. In both urban and rural areas, many kinds of undernutrition are prevalent- every fifth adolescent 10-14-years is Vitamin A deficient, every third adolescent girl is B12 or folate deficient, and at least 1 in 3 adolescents is zinc deficient. In recent years the prevalence of both undernutrition and overnutrition/obesity have increased tremendously and are estimated to affect the health and quality of life of about 1.2 billion Indian citizens. A preventable illness, obesity has compounding effects as it increases likelihood for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and a plethora of medical complications down the line.

But why the sudden change? Diet! Research has shown that most adolescents consume nutritionally inadequate diets characterized by a surplus of fats and sugars, and lessening consumption of fruits and vegetables. Fast food and junk food products like potato chips and sodas have become increasingly common, slowly replacing more traditional home-cooked staples. This is due in large part to urbanization. The burden of preparing meals and passing down cooking traditions falls largely on women, who are increasingly working out of the household, leaving less time to prepare healthy foods. To compensate for this cultural shift, processed foods have become more accessible in convenience stores and fast-food restaurants. In addition, school cafeterias often do not provide nutritious meals.

India’s next generation is faced with multifaceted nutrition deficit- a culture popularizing fast food, less traditional cooking knowledge and skills, accessibility of nutritionally inadequate foods, and insufficient nutrition education to help them realize the problem. Indian schools do not prioritize health education, instead focusing on natural sciences with an emphasis on rote learning. When nutrition is taught, it is typically taught as a part of a home sciences curriculum, which is often optional and not comprehensive. Again, the onus falls on girls and women to carry out this vital role. Most home sciences teachers are women, enrollment is substantially higher for girls, and the prevalence of home sciences courses is higher in all girls’ schools. In keeping with India’s academic culture, what courses are available are typically focused on memorization and fail to impart the critical thinking skills required to make informed nutrition decisions outside of the classroom. What results is a generation with an increased prevalence of a vast array nutrition related conditions on both sides of the spectrum, and no skills to combat them.

Various government and independent initiatives have tried to bridge this gap. Organizations like UNICEF focus on the first 1000 days of a child’s life to prevent stunting, as well as the adolescent girl population. Many other NGOs provide similar aid focusing on mothers and children in the form of folic acid supplements for pregnant women, counselling on breastfeeding, and micronutrient rich snacks to mothers and children. In 2001, the government launched a new initiative. The supreme court of India directed the government of India to provide cooked midday meals of no less than 300 kilocalories and 8-12g protein in all government and government-aided primary schools.. It has been estimated that daily nutrient intake of program participants increased by 49%, and with a cost of just 3 cents per child, the program reduced daily protein deficiency by 100% and calorie deficiency by  30%. The most dramatic improvements were made by those in the most dire states- children chronically affected by drought and very young children. The intervention yielded promising results, but unfortunately in the case of most participants, no long term affects were found.

The problem runs deep into the culture surrounding nutrition education. Indian academia also lacks an emphasis on nutrition. There are currently only 190 institutes in India that offer one or more nutrition courses. The discipline of public health nutrition does not exist as an independent discipline in any college/university across India. Culturally, the role of nutritionists is often seen to be limited to treating specific maladies on a case by case basis.

There is a resounding consensus among students, parents, teachers, and doctors alike that this is taking a toll on youth, yet action on all fronts has been insufficient. Undernutrition of children has lifelong impacts on cognition, which can affect career prospects in adult life. For these reasons, UNICEF recognizes ending undernutrition as a “national imperative.” A possible solution lies in shifting the culture around nutrition in the government and education sectors. It is necessary to institute policies that empower the people and shift the onus of nutrition from ill-equipped teens to large corporations. This could include taxing large fast-food chains with respect to how much fatty, fried food, sugary food, and large portions they serve. It could also  offer coupons for meals which qualify as nutritious under certain standards that could be used at restaurants and stores. Nutritional supplements could be provided free of charge to all children and expectant mothers. To empower people to make informed decisions about their diet, all schools should teach a comprehensive curriculum to all students covering exercise, diet, financing food, and cooking. This would lessen the disparity of responsibility between women and men, which would provide families with more hands in the kitchen capable of providing healthful homecooked meals. What India needs is a shift in the culture around nutrition studies. Entering the public health nutrition field could be incentivized and schools encouraged to consult with nutritionists when creating school lunches. This would shift the focus of nutrition to harm prevention rather than overburdening the healthcare system with preventable diseases like obesity and malnutrition.

Partera Influence on Health and Culture in Mexico | A Personal Story

This piece was written and contributed by CFHI participant Carmen Simmons, who was a Medical Student at Meharry Medical College when she participated in the Women’s Reproductive Health program in Puerto Escondido, Mexico in 2018.

When first arriving at the Centro de Salud, I have to admit I was proud of myself. I had managed to find the right colectivo in a mountainous countryside in the quaint town of Río Grande. After exchanging various “Buenos Dias”, I made my way over to partera, traditional midwife, Señora Lucia Zaguilan Mayoral.

At our first meeting, Sra. Lucia patiently listened to my never-ending questions in – let’s be honest – broken Spanish. When she spoke I struggled with the speed of her words. After some compromise on both of our parts, we found a tempo that worked for us to communicate.

Sra. Lucia calls Colonial Villa De Tututepec home and is a Rio Grande native. She has been attending births since she was 13 years old (today she is 63). Coming from a long line of parteras, she started learning as her grandmother’s apprentice. To this day, her family is filled with an impressive variety of healthcare workers.

She has attended conservatively well over 5,000 births. INCLUDING HER OWN CHILD’S! Yes, that’s right, she delivered her own son. She recounted the story to me while laughing at its ridiculousness. In her last days of pregnancy, she was in the kitchen cooking when her contractions started getting too close for comfort. She can’t exactly remember why no one was home, but nonetheless she had her abundant knowledge of births to comfort her. As calm as anyone could be while delivering her own child, Sra. Lucia guided her son toward the light of life. She even cut the cord herself! By the time her family came back home, they were greeted by a nursing newborn.

During the partera training I was able to witness, Lucia reflected on the immense amount of knowledge her grandmother bestowed onto her. This particular partera training is an annual training co-facilitated by Child Family Health International, local staff and a group of Northwestern students in partnership with the Oaxacan Ministry of Health. As a young girl, Lucia learned many techniques from her grandmother including monitoring her patient’s hair, skin, and eye color and the various methods of moving a baby into the correct position for delivery.

At the partera training, I immediately noticed that all of the women were 60 years or older. I asked her what she thought had changed in the last 20-30 years since she began practicing as a partera to account for this . She comments that she, and others, have noticed a change in attitude with the younger generation. She states that “most young women (under 35) are scared of anything to do with childbirth. Many want cesareans now. And the others are too afraid to learn to be a partera.” The sociopolitical context on the increasing cesarean rate in Mexico is interesting in itself. Approximately 39% of all hospital births in the state of Oaxaca were cesarean births. The World Health Organization states when the cesarean rate goes above 10%, there is no evidence that mortality rates improve.

During my time with Lucia and other parteras, I learned of the integral role that Parteras play in women’s health in Mexico although it seems to be an aging profession. I also learned about the scarcity of resources (financial, equipment, etc.) that the parteras face and overcome daily in their work. I fear that communities will not truly understand the immense importance of their role until there are very few left. My hope is we don’t wait until then, and find a way to revitalize younger generations to strengthen the tradition and empower the existing parteras.  

The LGBTQ+ Population in Uganda

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, but homosexuality is also illegal in 69 other countries worldwide, and the practice of labeling individuals as homosexual, gay, or lesbian was traditionally not a part of Ugandan culture. This topic was not politicized, and Ugandans accepted different practices. Recently, however, LGBTQ+ Rights in Uganda have become a prominent issue in politics and in the international media. In 2009, MP David Bahati proposed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill and in February 2014, it was signed into law by President Museveni. The Ugandan constitutional court struck down the law in August 2014, but civil rights activists say the situation for LGBTQ+ Ugandans is still worse than it was before the law. LGBTQ+ individuals, numbering around 500,000 in Uganda, often face consequences if they reveal their identity, so discussions about sexuality are rare.

While in country, focus on your safety and trust your gut. It is usually best to avoid questions about your sexuality and be ambiguous if asked. Please respect the local culture and assess who you are speaking to. Also, remember that travelers to Uganda often don’t face the same discrimination that locals do. As someone with “tourist privilege,” you may have slightly greater freedom of expression, but your actions may have repercussions for the locals you engage with, so please take that into consideration.

Traveling is always challenging, and LGBTQ+ individuals often face additional levels of complexity. The followingresources will help you to educate yourself on the local culture and social context. There are a wide range of resources available that will allow you to better understand the political climate and cultural nuances of a country. Some resources to explore include: ilga.org, the US State Department, the Geert Hofstede Center for Cultural Insights, the CIA World Factbook, alturi.org, ilgta.org, and HSBC Expat Explorer. It is also a good idea to register yourself with the State Department so they’re in a position to advocate for you. Staying in touch with friends and family back home who know your identity often helps travelers as well. Skype, Whatsapp, and Viber are good options for this.  

We also want to make explicitly clear that CFHI does not agree with or condone any discrimination based on sexuality. Our partners in Uganda are welcoming and do not practice discrimination, and students have not experienced any issues in the past. However, understanding the local context regarding LGBTQ+ rights will help ensure that there are no incidents in the future.

For more information, please refer to the following sources:

The OSAC LGBTQ Guide to Travel Safety

The State Department’s Website for LGBTI Travelers

The Human Rights Watch

The International Policy Digest’s Article on the Origins of Uganda’s Anti-Gay Law

Why Global Health Ethics Matter: A Personal Story

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In the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college (undergraduate), I participated in a medical volunteering program for 2 weeks in Antigua, Guatemala. As a pre-med student, I knew I wanted to do something during my summer that involved medicine and figured volunteering in a hospital or clinic would be my best bet. Unfortunately because I had a mostly full time job, I was unable to secure any type of volunteering program locally since they all required a certain amount of hours that I would not be able to complete before returning to my university in the fall.

I then decided to look online at volunteering abroad, and found a myriad of programs that fit my time constraints perfectly. I honestly did not do too much research and just clicked on the first organization I found that had a solid amount of positive reviews and wasn’t too expensive. Looking at the cheapest options, I saw that in Latin America they offered an affordable medical program in Guatemala. While scrolling through the program description, the phrases “gain hands on experience” and “provide check-ups and basic medical care” piqued my interest as the idea of actually getting to perform medical procedures sounded incredibly appealing to myself as a student interested in a career in medicine. I imaged working in a hospital with doctors and nurses and getting the opportunity to experience medicine directly. The program description made it seem that these “poor” communities needed any help they could get, so I figured that I could kill two birds with one stone-help this underserved country while also gaining medical experience. Even though there were red flags consistently throughout the program description-the program oozed “voluntourism” and provided very brief and limited information on what actually would take place during participation- I wasn’t suspicious at all because I didn’t expect anything that involved volunteering to be problematic.

After signing up, there was a very brief pre-departure guide I had to complete before embarking on my trip. The guide was just a general guide and mostly focused on the logistics of getting there (ie. visas, packing list, etc.). There was a short list on my responsibilities, but it didn’t really mention anything about ethics. There were also 2 optional pre-departure training modules that were more informative on ethics, but were brief and took less than 30 minutes to complete. I didn’t really feel that prepared for my program, but figured I would get more instruction and guidance once I arrived.

Once I finally made it to Guatemala, I started to see problems and holes within the program. Before starting my rotation, I met with the medical coordinator for the program to have orientation. The orientation was pretty short and consisted of a powerpoint on the kind of care we could provide. After telling him I had had no prior experience in medicine, he told me that I would act somewhat like a nurse, taking weight, height, blood pressure, heart rate and temperature, making beds, cleaning, talking with patients, preparing materials and sterilizing equipment. Even though I told him I didn’t know how to take blood pressure or heart rate, he assured me the other visiting volunteers at the clinic would teach me. This orientation started to leave me a little hesitant about the program since he asked us to provide medical care, but expected other volunteers to teach us instead of himself as a doctor showing us.

After arriving to the clinic where I would be volunteering at, I was sent to work at the nurse’s station. At my rotation, there were 2 other volunteers placed there as well who had been there for about 4 weeks. One was applying to medical schools in the United States and the other was a 3rd year medical student at a university in Ireland. Luckily, one of them spoke spanish fairly well and was able to translate for us when we interacted with both the nurses and patients.

After the other volunteers briefly taught me how to perform the basic nurses duties (blood pressure, height, weight, and temperature), I was mostly on my own. It was definitely very nerve wracking having these duties when I’d never done them before and was even more difficult considering I spoke very little of the language. I was especially confused on taking blood pressure and while I immediately should have said that I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I was embarrassed to tell the other volunteers since they insisted it was an easy task and that I’d get the hang of it eventually. This is definitely something I wish I could’ve gone back to and done differently because there is a large possibility that patients’ information was recorded incorrectly due to my lack of experience. This was when I started to realize that gaining hands on experience wasn’t what I imagined at all. In my head I thought that everything would go smoothly and I would be ready to help the professionals in anyway possible. In reality though, my lack of experience became even more apparent to myself and I started to become suspicious that the “help” I was providing wasn’t all too helpful.

Image result for antigua guatemala crossWhile my lack of training may have led to incorrect patient information being taken down, there were other pre-med volunteers who were given duties that were even further beyond their scope of understanding and led to medical complications for patients. Since there were other volunteers working at my clinic, they cautioned me right away that I shouldn’t help with procedures such as giving stitches or injections since we didn’t have the training for that (I think they figured taking down patient information was harmless enough that my inexperience wouldn’t be an issue). I was very thankful for that advice since I was already feeling uncomfortable with the duties I had, I couldn’t even imagine how stressed I would have been if I had to perform anything more advanced. However, other volunteers weren’t as reserved. I remember this one other volunteer bragging to me about how the doctor had allowed him to give injections to a patient. He said that he didn’t really know what he was doing and he ended up piercing her 5 times because he kept doing it wrong. Another volunteer told me she helped stitch a patient up and said she was concerned that her stitches weren’t done right since she had never done it before. It was at this point that I really started to question the program we were on. Why weren’t there more regulations enforced by the program? Why were the duties of the volunteers so ambiguous? Why was I starting to feel so uncomfortable with what I was doing and why weren’t the other volunteers having the same questions I was?  

Besides just the volunteer aspect of the program, there were a lot of problems with the program as a whole, in particular when it came to safety. We were warned to never travel by ourselves at night. In keeping with those rules, two volunteers on my program walked home together one night after hanging out downtown. On their way home, someone pulled a knife on them and took all their belongings. The volunteers were traumatized and felt very unsafe about what had happened and contacted the program to let them know of the situation. The program responded incredibly insensitively and told them it was their fault for walking home late at night and didn’t provide any support for the two. Their response to an emergency situation such as this really made me concerned about the legitimacy of this program. They had told us it was okay to be out at night as long as we weren’t alone, yet blamed the volunteers for what happened instead of offering emotional support and/or more information on how we could stay safer while out at night.

I left my program feeling differently than I had expected. While I loved the country I was staying in, I felt disconnected from what I was actually doing. I felt uneasy about what myself and other volunteers had done without any medical experience and questioned my helpfulness. My experience showcases how easy it is for medical volunteering programs to be problematic and harmful for the communities they’re situated in when there is not an emphasis on global health ethics.

 

Note from CFHI: Many thanks to Zoe for sharing her story. If you have questions about ethical engagement in global health experiences please visit the publications page on the CFHI website (https://www.cfhi.org/publications) or listen to a recent webinar (https://www.cfhi.org/cfhi-webinars). We are also always available to answer questions about ethical global health engagement- contact us at students@cfhi.org.

CFHI at the Forefront of Ethical Standards in Global Health Education

As global health programs increase in popularity among students based in the Global North, an important conversation around “voluntourism” and intentionality in international health-related programs has emerged. Voluntourism often consists of students engaging in short-term volunteer work that they are not professionally, socially, or culturally equipped to take on, and – though well intentioned – often perpetuates hurtful stereotypes that low and middle-income countries need help from high-income countries. At their worst, global health voluntourism programs may offer students opportunities that end up harming patients and other community members. The pitfalls of voluntourism have been widely critiqued, including through popular satires such as the “Barbie Savior– The Doll That Saved Africa.”

How then, as an organization that promotes global health education, does CFHI make sure that our programs – as well as health-related global education programs more broadly – are ethical in theory, approach and practice? Part of the answer to that question is by getting global health organizations on the same page, ethically, and giving them the guidelines needed to run quality health education programs abroad.

CFHI Executive Director Jessica Evert, M.D. has recently co-authored two sets of internationally recognized guidelines for health-related experiences abroad which outline standards in programming that can improve global health programs for students and global partners. These guidelines shift the focus of global health programs away from hands-on clinical work (which can be dangerous and have long-lasting negative impacts for patients and visiting students) and toward cultural and contextual education of healthcare in different settings globally, as defined by local experts and community host partners. They also provide key frameworks for establishing long-term partnerships with host communities rooted principles like reciprocity, local leadership, and fair trade.

Guidelines for Undergraduate Health-Related Experiences Abroad was released by The Forum on Education Abroad, a conglomerate of US colleges and universities, organizations and foundations aimed at establishing standards of best practices in international education programs. Their newly updated set of guidelines is the first of its kind set forth by the Forum and is meant to be used along with the Standards of Good Practice for Education Abroad in order to promote ethical practices specific to health-related international education experiences.

In addition to the Forum Guidelines, Dr. Evert also recently co-authored the article “Guidelines for Responsible Short-Term Global Health Activities: Developing Common Principles” in Globalization and Health, which helps to summarize existing standards and guidelines in the field.  With the release of both sets of guidelines, Dr. Evert and colleagues focus on creating a common ground between institutions and organizations involved in global health education. With clear and concise standards of best practices in global health, organizations are given the opportunity to improve the ethical standards of their programs, and to keep the best interests of host partners and student trainees in mind.

By contributing to standards of best practice in global health education, CFHI is challenging the narrative around health-centered international experiences and pushing other global health organizations to do the same.

Toward Planetary Health

By Anne-Gaëlle Jacquin

What could a phycologist (an algae researcher) possibly do at CFHI? If you type this query into an Internet browser, it will probably ask “Do you mean psychologist?“ The link between global health and algae doesn’t seem obvious at first but there are definitely some common threads, specifically around sustainability.

I am a marine biologist. When I was in grad school, there was a daily barrage of news about the unprecedented scale of environmental and ecological damage  to our planet. While working on my PhD in algal biotechnology, what struck me was how algae had so much potential to help mitigate some of our sustainability challenges. Inspired by this, I founded The Algonauts Project in 2010 to chronicle algae innovations for sustainability. I met with more than 150 specialists, whom I call Algonauts, living in over 17 countries. These Algonauts are scientists, entrepreneurs, NGOs, fishermen, farmers and inventors. They develop applications with algae which help with food production, wastewater treatment, environmentally friendly aquaculture, CO2 offset, biomaterials, new medicines and many more innovations. To help spread their knowledge and enthusiasm about algae, I document these innovations and the stories of the Algonauts at www.algonauts.org.

When Dr. Evert, CFHI’s Executive Director, told me about the concepts of Planetary Health and One Health, I wasn’t familiar with them. In the subsequent weeks, the more I learned about these concepts, the more I found myself jumping with the excitement of a breakthrough!

Over the last few years, a common theme has emerged in sustainability science: to reach universal objectives of sustainability and address the complexities of global problems, there is a clear need for transdisciplinarity approaches and an integration of knowledge from experience and from science. The archetypal convention of separating natural and social science in academia had conducted in an incomplete understanding of nature-society interactions and the integrated dynamics of the ‘Earth system’ as a whole.

And often times, in such transdisciplinary work, weaving a compelling narrative across complex disciplines isn’t always possible.

This is where the concepts of Planetary Health and One Health make so much sense – they offer a powerful bridge between very different disciplines – health of the human population and the health of our environment, including animal health. This emphasis on the human health consequences of the degradation of natural systems throws into sharp relief the urgency and fragility of our current situation, and emphasizes that the health of one can not be examined without examining the other.

The concept of Planetary Health, recently formalized through the launch of a new journal, The Lancet Planetary Health, is defined as the achievement of the highest standard of health, wellbeing and equity worldwide. It encompasses a wide spectrum of disciplines for investigating not only the effects of environmental change on human health but also the human systems (political, economic, social) that govern these effects.

One Health recognizes human, animal and environmental health as interconnected and particularly emphasizes the interdisciplinary collaboration between human and veterinary medicine.

CFHI has long been committed to the promotion of Planetary Health and One Health and the diversity of its nearly 40 programs offer students and faculty the possibility to explore these transdisciplinary and integrated approaches and to acquire an intercultural literacy which is also fundamental for sustainability.

Offerings include the “Community Medicine from Rainforest to Coast” program in Ecuador, where students gain exposure to rural and community medicine in both rural and urban settings, exploring chronic, acute, and infectious and tropical diseases. The program provides anthropological insight into indigenous communities by learning the unique worldview of the Shuar tribe and their uses for traditional medicinal plants combined with spiritual practices. In this program, students will learn from local experts about a wide range of environmental disciplines (botany, animal husbandry, forestry, entomology) and the sociocultural and political aspects of jungle preservation.

In Kabale, Uganda, with CFHI’s “Nutrition, Food Security, & Sustainable Agriculture” program, students learn about veterinary approaches developed in the Rabbit Breeding and Training Center in Kabale, exploring how proper care and hygiene for raising rabbits are the grassroots for integrated economic, social and health improvements. Students also learn about ground-breaking integrated approaches for improving food security and nutrition. From primary care clinic to rural communities, students observe and contribute to the implementation of practical solutions in health, farming and education and the positive impact of these programs on maternal and child health.

You can explore CFHI’s offerings in Planetary and One Health here: CFHI Planetary Heath & One Health Initiative

Looking at sustainability through the lens of global health has been a very enriching experience, opening lots of new prospects. I can foresee algae in some of them and can’t wait to explore them further!
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Anne-Gaëlle is a marine biologist from Plogoff, a village in Brittany at the Western tip of Europe where the ocean is all around! In this end/beginning of the land, there is wilderness, quiet, wonderful lights and powerful storms. Anne is fascinated by nature, the universe and life as a whole, from the complexity of cellular mechanisms to human societies. She obtained her PhD from the University of Western Brittany in France and afterwards she felt the need to look at the bigger picture.  She saw that microalgae and seaweeds are fundamental in ecosystems and could play an even bigger role in the future for sustainability. After her PhD, when the reputation of algae was very negative due to green tides, she started a journey around the world to share the wonders of algae.  Learn more about her project at www.algonauts.org

Getting One Step Closer to a Unified Global Health Curriculum


The term “Global Health” can be an all encompassing, and sometimes, vague term.  Individuals from the fields of public health, medicine, and more have all defined this term in different ways.  That is why when the Consortium of Universities for Global health convened in 2008, one of the items that members called for was to define the field of global health and standardize required curricula and competencies for the emerging discipline.

We are excited to announce that, as of this week, we are one step closer in providing that definition as the Global Health Competencies Sub-committee of CUGH released a new toolkit that brings together resources from a wide array of subjects and authors in the field of global health.  All this under the leadership of CFHI and our Executive Director, Dr. Jessica Evert.  Thank you for this great effort across dozens of institutions and fields!

Referred to as the CUGH Global Health Competencies toolkit, the resource is designed to help Global Health faculty build curricula and competencies that may stretch beyond their immediate area of expertise.  As the field of Global Health grows in its maturity as an academic field, we here at CFHI are proud to be at the vanguard.

 

CFHI Impacts: How Local Communities are Transformed

By Lyndsey Brahm
Program Coordinator

Child Family Health International (CFHI) has always prided itself on fostering honorable and long-lasting relationships with its international partner communities. Communities feel empowered and confident that their partnership with CFHI will contribute substantially to their developmental goals and will pave the way for a promising future. CFHI uses several mechanisms to support its partner communities: global health education programs, research and advocacy, and community health projects.

CFHI Community Health Projects build and reinforce the importance of passion within resource-restricted communities. They use an asset-based community engagement approach that focuses on strengths rather than needs and weaknesses. These projects help to bring solidarity, financial support, material support, and exposure to innovative ideas that are led by local health care workers, community leaders, and other native change agents, thus building local capacity, skills, and fueling passion to create a better tomorrow.

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CFHI is currently supporting seven community health projects within five countries, in addition to professional development opportunities that arise for CFHI partners. In July 2016, Dr. Geoffrey Anguyo and Martin Ngabirano, our local partners in Kabale, Uganda, attended the 21st International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa as part of their commitment to fighting high HIV rates within southern Uganda. This opportunity not only provides momentum for their grassroots based initiatives and aims to improve the livelihood the community members, but it also sets an example for incoming CFHI participants to learn from.

The number of mothers and children attending the Young Mother’s Empowerment Center in El Alto continues to rise each year, since opening its doors in 2013. The center now provides a safe haven for six mothers and 10 children, a place where the women can access quality child care opportunities, health care services, support groups for victims of domestic violence, and advice on employment and educational opportunities. The women feel solace is having one another as support and more confident seeking out means of improving their lives and that of their children.

40 traditional midwives-parteras-attended an annual continuing education training in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico this past summer. This 4 day training is hosted each year by CFHI, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the Oaxaca Ministry of Health and has been running since 2010. There is a unique energy and fervor amongst the midwives about being able to access educational tools to improve the care they provide for a high percentage of women in Oaxaca’s coastal region.

Midwife Training in Oaxaca, Mexico

Midwife Training in Oaxaca, Mexico

CFHI devotes significant time and energy to honoring the skills, expertise and commitment its international partners have to their own communities. It’s important to recognize the potential of individuals within the communities and those that have an unshakeable determination create positive and lasting change. We salute to that!

Ethical Dilemmas in Global Internships: Lessons from the GIC 2016

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by Robin Young
Assistant Director, Africa and Asia

“The first year that the Northeastern Students came to the Tunaweza Children’s Centre in Uganda, it was wonderful!” shares Titi Pamela Kakonge, founder of the Centre, which offers a range of therapies for children with disabilities. “But then they left, and all the local parents withdrew their children from our school. They thought that since the Mzungus (white people) had gone, the program was over.”

The vacuum left by the departing students was gaping, despite the fact that the Centre was led and staffed by a robust local team. After that, Ms. Kakonge and Northeastern University worked together to find ways to ensure that the community saw the local staff as the leaders and the teachers, not vice versa. Today the Centre runs year-round, successfully receiving interns from Northeastern and other institutions, with clear local leadership and well-defined job descriptions for the physical and speech therapy interns.

I heard Ms. Kakonge speak at the Global Internship Conference in Boston earlier in June, at a session titled “Tunaweza Children’s Centre- We Can: An Interprofessional, International Partnership with Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences.”  Ms. Kakonge founded the Centre while searching for adequate care and services for her daughter who was born with disabilities. The challenge that she highlighted above has been well documented.

Pamela Roy, Farzana Karim-Haji, and Robert Gough call this the ‘revolving door’ nature of exchange between students and hosts, and propose several ideas for host communities to address this ethical dilemma, all of which Northeastern is now utilizing. They suggest making certain that students are sufficiently prepared for the experience, taking steps to ensure that host community needs are truly being met through the internship, and equipping students to listen, observe, and learn from the host community.

During their session at the GIC, Roy, Kaim-Haji, and Gough, drawing on their experiences at Aga Khan University, Western University, and the Consultancy for Global Higher Education, highlighted a new, open-access resource they have developed, titled “Building Ethical Global Engagement with Host Communities: North-South Collaborations for Mutual Learning and Benefit.” In it, they compile recent findings and summarize the ethical dilemmas that challenge all of us who engage in North-South Global Internships, including mobility inequality (in which students from the north have more access to the south in terms of professional development and career opportunities than vice versa); exploitation of the host community as research participants; and unethical marketingand advertisement to promote global internships, to name a few. The resource offers definitions of these dilemmas and offers a series of recommendations that can help all of us in the field to improve our global internship offerings.

At CFHI, we’re always thinking about how to offer internships that, to quote a recent publication on short-term global health experiences, “Optimize community benefit and learner experience.” From where we stand, an internship should only take place if we can ensure that it benefits, within an ethical framework, our partners around the world, as well as the intern.  We do this by engaging in fair trade learning practices, ensuring that our partners are fairly compensated for their work and have substantial leadership and input into all internships and programming; by requiring our participants and interns to complete the Global Ambassadors for Patient Safety modules, preparing them to engage in ethical medical practice that prioritizes patient safety at all times; and by inserting interns into existing healthcare and social service systems, with local leaders who focus on assets rather than deficits in their communities. I had the opportunity to share some of these resources during a session at the GIC alongside Moira Mannix Votel, Associate Co-op Coordinator & Director of Cooperative Education at Northeastern University’s Bouve College Cooperative Education.

At CFHI, we strive to close the ‘revolving door’ referred to earlier.  It is important to us to create leaders for the future who understand a larger view of the world beyond their own.  We are continuously pushed and encouraged by the input of our colleagues in this field and look forward to moving this conversation forward at any opportunity.


Rorobinyoungphotobin joined the CFHI team in 2015. As Assistant Director, Africa and Asia, she provides program management and support for CFHI’s programs, helping to ensure program safety and quality, best practices in international education, and strong institutional and global partnerships. Robin’s professional background includes extensive work in international education, global health, and asset-based development. Robin holds an MBA from Florida International University and a BA in Sociology/Anthropology with a minor in Ethnic Studies from Lewis and Clark College. She completed a course at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication, helping to inform her interest in increasing intercultural competency in global work and education, and subsequently co-authored the Cultural Detective Dominican Republic series. Robin received a Fulbright Fellowship grant in 2007 and spent a year researching gender-based violence in the Dominican Republic, where she ended up living for nearly 5 years. Robin is passionate about supporting thoughtful, ethical and asset-based strategies to address health disparities and support underserved communities. She lives in the Bay Area and loves backpacking, riding her bike, and spending time with family and friends.

 

A Recap of CFHI’s Time at PEGASUS 2016

Pegasus-logo

CFHI was proud to send their Program Coordinator, Lyndsey Brahm, to the 2016 PEGASUS Conference that took place in Toronto over May 13th to 15th.  PEGASUS is an acronym derived from the conference’s three main themes of peace, global health and sustainability. Leaders, change-makers, professionals and students from multiple disciplines convened to share their expertise in research, education, field experiences, advocacy and policy in order to address unacceptable levels of poor health nationally and internationally.

CFHI hosted a workshop on asset-based community development (ABCD) and introduced our vision into how recognizing assets within a community as opposed to what is lacking can prove to be a successful global engagement approach and can lead to communities feeling more empowered. CFHI has numerous partnerships throughout ten different countries and prides itself on fostering sustainable relationships and not being “fair weather friends.” We want the communities we work with to take ownership of their own development and to be enthusiastic about sharing their expertise with our global health scholars who come seeking new perspectives in health and medicine, outside of their own system.

Program Coordinator, Lyndsey Brahm asserts, “We want people to challenge their way of thinking and to see past what may initially appear as image2chaos and devastation; to lend time towards learning about innovative ideas already in place and community strengths that are critical to overcoming health challenges that persist within their community.”

A buzz was in the air as this thought-stimulating conference carried on throughout the weekend. One presentation that stood out from our perspective belonged to Matt DeCamp, Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics and in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine. He spoke on the subject of global health ethics, encouraging students and trainees to go abroad for longer, and the development of appropriate pre-departure materials. He shared his experience about a global health trip he undertook as a medical student at Duke University, where he faced challenges cultural differences and was exposed to human rights. He remembers feeling unequipped and under prepared to deal with such circumstances. He now contributes to the development of adequate pre-departure materials for those seeking an international health experience and runs focus groups for returnees at Johns Hopkins University.  CFHI recently gave a webinar on this very subject.  Which is available by clicking here.

CFHI was excited to be a sponsor for this year’s PEGASUS conference.. It is a valuable space for CFHI and others within the field to challenge one another and generate new ideas, actions and policies to improve the health and well being of the world’s citizens, whether on a small or large scale. The commitment is fierce.

Seeing India Through New Eyes: An Indian-American Student’s Study Abroad Experience

In December 2014, I left the comforts of San Francisco to take part in the Public Health & Community Medicine in India program through Child Family Health International (CFHI). During my 4 weeks in northern India, I had the opportunity to engage with and learn from various non-governmental organizations that are tackling public health challenges like injection drug use, sanitation, and prostitution. For the first week, we worked with a WHO-recognized organization in Chandigardh that focuses on women and children’s health care. One of my fondest memories from this experience was being able to interact with the female sex workers that this NGO helps. I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Aditi*, who told me how her hardships from back home forced her to become a sex worker in order to keep her children in school. Listening to Aditi’s story really put my life into perspective. Aditi, who is a mom, sister, wife, and daughter, was literally sacrificing her own body for the sake of her children, something only a strong individual would be able to do. I couldn’t help or stop Aditi from being a sex worker, however what I could do was be someone she could talk to, someone who would listen to her, even if only for a short amount of time. It was an exchange of hellos, an exchange of respect, and an exchange of appreciation that I could give Aditi, and ironically, in the end, what she gave me. This experience taught me that it is impossible to understand a public health issue like prostitution without understanding the human beings whom it affects.

DeepaWhen I embarked on this experience, it had been 6 years since my last visit to India. The transformation I saw in the country was phenomenal. I noticed improvements in infrastructure and cultural changes. Years ago, the topics of HIV/AIDS or sex workers were very taboo. No one liked to acknowledge any health risks and the government wasn’t doing much to spread awareness of such issues. Visiting the country now and witnessing the many programs the government has implemented within each state was inspirational. Programs such as NACO have made such a difference in the lives of countless people across northern India by providing necessary services and supplies to lead a healthier and safer lifestyle. Apart from HIV/AIDS, I also witnessed changes in the caste system in India. In this system, “untouchables” are deemed to be the lowest caste because of their occupation of being scavengers (individuals who clean up human waste from homes due to lack of toilets). This program gave us the opportunity to work with a UN-recognized social service organization based in Delhi that is committed to getting rid of the untouchables caste by creating a toilet complex system to implement in villages across the country.

Being an Indian-American, I was able to appreciate India in a manner I never had before. I had always heard about various problems in India, whether it was about the spread of HIV/AIDS or the controversial caste system, but I always felt helpless living more than 8,000 miles away. Through CFHI, I was lucky enough to meet people like Aditi, and listen to their stories to understand what really is going on in the world outside of our own bubble in America. Often times, I have heard my very own friends and family who are Indian-American comment on how “backwards” India is in terms of development and simple progressive ideology about issues pertaining to HIV/AIDS. By experiencing India first hand, I now have the knowledge and experience to educate my friends and family and help them be more aware of important public health issues. Reading and hearing the news about India is one thing, but actually being within India’s space and engaging with the people of that country helps put these issues in perspective.

UntitledAs a senior graduating college soon, I am at the crossroads where I have to choose what I want to pursue for the rest of my life. After my 4 weeks in India, I realized that this trip wasn’t coming to an end for me, it was just the beginning.  CFHI not only gave me clarity, but also a sense of direction. The CFHI program solidified my decision to pursue a career in the field of public health. Prior to the program, I knew that I wanted to obtain my MPH, however I wasn’t clear on what specialty to emphasize in. This trip exposed me to the world of global health and made me realize that it would be the perfect field within public health for me. CFHI not only helped me fall in Iove with India again, but it also helped give me a sense of purpose that I perhaps would not have found without this trip.

*Name has been changed to respect privacy. 

Special thanks to our guest blogger, CFHI alumna Deepa Mistry, for authoring this post.

CFHI Unveils Inaugural Alumni Advisory Board

Over the past 23 years, Child Family Health International (CFHI) has transformed over 8,000 participants’ lives through our Global Health Education Programs in 7 countries. CFHI Global Health Scholars experience competency-based education and asset-based community development, while contributing to the transformational ways that CFHI’s partners address health and healing.

AAB logo

As experts in this approach, CFHI welcomes our alumni to contribute to our global health efforts in a new and influential way. CFHI is now accepting applications for its inaugural Alumni Advisory Board (AAB). Through the AAB, CFHI alumni will help shape our organization’s advocacy, education and development efforts, as well as the impact that CFHI Global Health Scholars have long after they return from their international programs.

The Alumni Advisory Board provides a structure to facilitate alumni interaction with CFHI, including soliciting alumni opinions and input, mobilizing alumni on CFHI’s behalf, encouraging intra-alumnus mentoring, and providing alumni an opportunity to stay involved in global health and CFHI in a formal/professional development fashion.

The AAB is 12 members with diverse professional background at varying stages of their career. The board will increase collaboration between CFHI alumni, staff and international partners—all committed to advancing CFHI’s mission and building the next generation of global health leaders.

AAB members will engage and benefit from the experience in various ways. For CFHI alumni in the early stages of their career, the board will provide an opportunity to build leadership skills, network with like-minded students and professionals, and further build their global health experience. AAB members who are further along in their careers can lend their expertise, mentor other CFHI alumni, or serve in a senior leadership role on the board. The AAB will enable our alumni to build on the cross-cultural relationships that were created during their CFHI experience and apply that knowledge to their personal and professional endeavors.

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CFHI is seeking a diverse pool of applicants for the Alumni Advisory Board of a variety of professional fields, education levels, and backgrounds. In addition, CFHI welcomes all skills including graphic design, social media, event planning, etc. AAB members will be a voice for their CFHI host community, therefore applicants will be chosen from CFHI’s 7 country sites—Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, India, Mexico, South Africa and Uganda.

Applications for CFHI’s inaugural Alumni Advisory Board are due by April 1st and can be filled out here. A committee consisting of CFHI Staff and Board of Directors will select AAB members for the 2015-2017 term by June 2015.

For more information, please contact alumni@cfhi.org.

Alumni Spotlight: Q&A with Alana D’Onofrio

Alana D’Onofrio participated in CFHI’s program Exploring HIV & Maternal/Child Health in Kabale, Uganda in September 2014. She is an aspiring physician assistant and recent graduate of Northern Arizona University, where she majored in Biomedical Sciences.

Q. How did you hear about CFHI? What attracted you to the Uganda program?

I heard about CFHI through the study abroad program at Northern Arizona University. CFHI was highly recommended to me. It had always been a passion of mine to volunteer in Africa and experience the culture there—that is what attracted me to the Uganda program.

Q. What were your goals going in to the program? How did CFHI help you in achieving those?

IMG_8705My goals going into the program were really to gain knowledge—whether that be medical or healthcare knowledge, or knowledge of a different culture and how people live, eat, dance, work, etc. in a country completely foreign to me. CFHI helped me accomplish these goals. Their partner organization in Kabale has some very special staff members who were willing to teach me so much. They allowed me to ask any question, explained everything about the people of Uganda and their culture, and made me feel very comfortable.

Q. How did the program impact you?

The program impacted me greatly. It solidified my goals of wanting to go into a healthcare career because I learned how much I love working with patients. I also feel more worldly. I now know so much about a country in Africa where very few Americans travel to. I know about the people, the food, the music, and the languages of Uganda. I saw how amazing the people that live there are, how simply they live, and how much they enjoy life no matter how hard it is. The people there inspired me to live my life like them and to never take anything you have for granted.

Q. What were the highlights of your experience?

I have so many highlights of my time in Uganda. One highlight would be heading down to the clinic everyday, excited to see the staff and looking forward to what I was going to learn or see that day. The relationships that I established with the staff are another highlight. We had amazing conversations and always had so much fun. Other highlights include traveling to villages for outreaches to treat people who could not make it to the main clinic in Kabale, hiking the Muhavura Volcano in Kisoro, and going on a safari in Queen Elizabeth National Park.

Q. How has the program changed your perception of health? 

IMG_9148I now understand the diversity of health. Health in Uganda is very different than health in America, yet there are many similarities. There are diseases unique to East Africa that I was able to see and study. There are also differences in the way people are treated and diagnosed for these conditions. The diagnostic tests in Uganda are much more limited, therefore many cases are not solved. Certain conditions and diseases that are treated easily in America are not easily treated in Uganda and are sometimes fatal because people do not have the money to pay for healthcare services or because they wait until that last minute to get checked out.

Q. Who was the most inspiring person you met on the program?

The most inspiring person I met was Allen. He is a medical officer who works under Dr. Anguyo at the KIHEFO clinic and he is the preceptor who I shadowed. He has such a passion to help and treat others. The clinic is very understaffed and Allen wants to go back to school to become more qualified in certain areas such as radiology, so that he can help the clinic even more. While he treated patients, he was so patient and always took the time to explain things to me. Overall, he was a great teacher and such a passionate healthcare worker.

Q. How has your worldview changed?

I knew so little of Uganda and even the continent of Africa before my trip. Africa is not at all like what is portrayed of it on the news. Obviously there are parts with war, disease, and extreme poverty, but there are also amazing things about Africa that I was able to see. I no longer associate one country of Africa with the whole continent. Each country is unique.

 

Special thanks to Alana D’Onofrio for allowing us to interview her for this post.

Applying Competency-Based Education to Global Health Electives

For those who have participated in a service-learning trip abroad, you understand how life changing it can be. Visiting and learning from a community and culture different from your own can affect you in deep and meaningful ways. But programs and experiences vary widely. Some may claim opportunities for personal and professional growth, yet transparency and best practices are not always the reality on the ground. Also undermining quality, few programs provide true long-term benefits to the host community. One way that medical service-learning trips, or global health electives, can ensure quality is by applying a competency-based framework.alwar2

What is competency-based education?

Competency-based education (CBE) is not new, but the concept is receiving renewed attention in many fields, including global health and medical education. One distinguishing feature of CBE is that it begins with the end in mind. This means that the first priority when creating a competency-based curriculum is identifying the desired characteristics and qualities of a competent graduate. Once these characteristics are defined, they are broken down into building blocks, called competencies, which students master as they move through the curriculum. Unlike traditional education, competencies do not have to be course-specific or based on a specific number of course hours; instead, they integrate everything that the student is learning at a given time and build upon each other throughout their schooling. The amount of time required to master the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to achieve each competency may vary, but competence must be demonstrated before students are able to progress in the curriculum.

The beauty of CBE is that it is fluid and flexible, promoting critical application of the course material with a focus on what students should be able to do, as opposed to a singular emphasis on knowledge. The ability of CBE to produce graduates who are competent professionals has made the approach increasingly popular among various health fields. In fact, The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH), the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), and the Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS) have all developed core competencies for their programs.

 Competency-based education in global health:

CFHI Students with Local Physician

CFHI Students with Local Physician

Over the past decade interest in global health has surged. Many health professions have integrated global health into their curriculum by applying a competency-based framework. The ASPPH created a Global Health Competency Model that builds on their established core competencies and the Joint US/Canadian Committee on Global Health Core Competencies established a set of six competencies for medical graduates. Even as competencies for global health education become more prevalent, little attention is being paid to global health electives (GHEs). This is puzzling considering GHEs are the primary way students gain experience in global health and in 2013, 30.2% of graduating medical students participated in a GHE.

It is easy to understand why GHEs are increasing in popularity. GHEs provide benefits to students, improving cultural competence, strengthen clinical skills, and increased appreciation for prevention and providing care to the underserved. However, opportunities for growth are not always guaranteed as they are based entirely on program quality. Unfortunately, little effort has gone into determining the structure and educational objectives for GHEs. One way to ensure GHEs meet the needs of students and host communities is to apply a competency-based framework built around the health needs of the host community. Even though most GHEs take place in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), current global health competencies are primarily developed by professionals from high-income countries and little research has explored the effects of GHEs on local communities. In order to develop positive, reciprocal relationships with host communities, colleagues in LMICs need to be engaged in conversation to identify local health priorities and relevant competencies to address them. Students thinking about participating in a GHE can promote responsible global health education by choosing a program or organization, such as Child Family Health International, that has strong international partnerships and is dedicated to protecting the interests of host communities.

Bottom Line

Global health electives that promote cross-cultural partnerships and emphasize competencies addressing the health needs of the local community can provide incredible opportunities for personal and professional growth, while simultaneously offering benefits to the host community.

 

Special thanks to CFHI Intern, Emily December Latham, for authoring this blog.

CFHI Convenes Pre-health Advisors for Workshop on Global Health Best Practices

Advising Students on Health Experiences Abroad

On June 26th, I collaborated on a workshop entitled “Beyond the Basics: Advising Students on Health Experiences Abroad,” led by Child Family Health International (CFHI) Executive Director Dr. Jessica Evert and Tricia Todd, MPH, Assistant Director of the University of Minnesota Health Careers Center. The workshop coincided with the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP) Annual Conference, held this year in San Francisco. Advisors arrived at CFHI’s San Francisco headquarters in to a full house with over 20 attendees representing 15 different colleges and universities. Small Liberal Arts colleges from Maine were particularly well represented, with advisors from Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby College in attendance.CFHI Advising Health Students Workshop

As a grad student of International Education Management, I was interested to observe the backgrounds represented amongst the attendees. Some were faculty in science departments, some staff from career development offices, and others from programs specifically geared towards global health. What everyone had in common was knowledge of issues relating to advising pre-health students, and all expressed worries regarding the growth of an “industry” to meet the rapidly growing demand from students seeking health-training programs abroad.

Health Students Doing Too Much, Too Soon – How to Choose Reputable Programs

The issue of the commodification of education abroad, which I was familiar with from graduate courses, took on greater significance when discussing health-related programs where issues of medical ethics and patient safety come into play. In such cases, not only are students being sold an education abroad “experience”, but unethical program providers tell students that they will be able to perform clinical work that exceeds their training and “change the world” through their work, effectively putting patients’ lives at risk.

Advisors were eager to discuss strategies for guiding students towards reputable programs and avoiding companies and experiences where students are encouraged to “do too much, too soon.” Case studies were presented, based on actual incidents from the field. Some were particularly alarming: undergraduates delivering babies, students conducting hospital rounds unsupervised, even instances of students scrubbing in for surgery! Unfortunately many students are under the erroneous impression that participating in this type of hands-on clinical experience will give them a leg-up in the competitive world of medical, nursing or other health professions school admissions. Part of the messaging to pre-health professions students therefore needs to focus on how performing clinical duties beyond what they are authorized to do here in the U.S. is highly unethical, and could jeopardize their own careers.

CFHI Advising Health Students

Before the evening was over, Dr. Evert, playing the roll of the advisor, and I, playing the part of a well meaning (but naïve) pre-med student, acted out an all too common scenario for the group. Fortunately, in our fictional advising session the student wasreceptive to ideas. The advisor convinces the student to re-examine motivations for wanting to go abroad, and suggests the right questions to ask when choosing a global health education program. The role-play emphasized the many tools available for students to examine their motivations for taking part in a health experience abroad. I think advisors in attendance left the CFHIUMN Health Careers Workshop with new resources, a feeling of community, and a better sense of how to guide students to help them make better decisions for their global health education.

 

Special thanks to our guest blogger, CFHI Intern Alex Nichol, for authoring this post.

Making Sure Global Health Education Doesn’t Perpetuate Disparities

“Global health education is at a crossroad. The landmark Commission on Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century highlighted the substantial disparities in health education worldwide and proposed reforms to enable all health professionals to “participate in patient and population-centered health systems as members of locally responsive and globally connected teams”.

This quote was taken from the Lancet article entitled ‘Equitable access for global health internships: insights and strategies at WHO headquarters.’ The Lancet Global Health article highlights the need for broadly accessible global health internships— ones that allow for exposure to community-engaged programs by students from a variety of socioeconomic and professional school backgrounds.  The barriers to access to global health educational opportunities are real and require the global health education community to embrace novel approaches, alliances, and funding mechanisms.

CFHI Ecuador Global Health

CFHI global health interns with local physician in Ecuador.

Child Family Health International– CFHI a leader in global health education programs for over 20 years, is mindful of these barriers. As a nonprofit running global health internships that advocate for ethics and social responsibility, we recognize there are significant costs associated with global health internships and provide fair compensation to local communities and professional mentors that shape the intern experience through their time, energy and expertise. This follows best practice guidelines set out by the Working Group on Ethics Guidelines for Global Health Training (WEIGHT).  However, program fees needed to provide resources for host communities and to support and educate interns can be a barrier to equitable access to reach beyond students from resource-rich backgrounds.

Like the WHO, CFHI utilizes scholarships in an effort to seek out candidates that may have greater financial need, limited opportunity to travel abroad, and those whose are under-represented in our programs. Scholarships and funding initiatives such as these are key to making real strides in south-to-south participation in global health internships and reducing their exclusivity as the domain of the wealthy.  In addition, CFHI provides a crowdfunding platform to make it easier for students to raise funds through friends, family, mentors, and wider social media networks. Crowdfunding is growing, and is a powerful tool that should be considered by WHO and other global health internship providers.

“For sustainable improvements in internship access and improved global health education, academic and professional institutions need to partner with the public sector and foundations, donors, and governments to channel resources to achieve this aim. However, the scale of this task necessitates the involvement of multiple stakeholders. Who else will step up and contribute to a growing movement towards equitable access for training, educational, and networking opportunities in global health? And who should lead this transition and monitor its success?”

The article is ‘right on’ with its call to arms.  If global health education programs and internships to not focus on equity, access and diversity, we risk perpetuating the same power imbalances and disparities that the global health community strives to eliminate. Child Family Health International commends WHO and the Lancet article authors for highlighting this issue and remedying it with action and advocacy.

 

How can we ensure that more students have access to global health and other professional and international internships?  Comment on the Lancet blog or tell CFHI what you think below!

Travel vs. Transformation: Career Impacts

Travel and Cultural Intelligence

“Where are you from?” is often the hardest question for me to answer. Do I give the short answer, the long answer, or settle for “it’s complicated” like a provocative Facebook relationship status? Yet that dilemma is a small price to pay for all I’ve gained through experiences living and traveling around the world.

A study from the journal of Social Psychological & Personality Science found that those who engage in multicultural and international environments are more likely to be offered jobs. At surface value, this comes as no surprise; in any arena these days—school, job, socially, or otherwise—it is beneficial to set yourself apart, and “multicultural experiences,” are a great way to do so. But simply accumulating stamps in your passport is not enough. In an article on the study, David Livermore writes “If business travelers spend their time at international hotels and offices; and if study abroad students spend their free time on Skype and Facebook, travel may have little positive benefit for improving CQ (cultural intelligence) and career opportunities.”  Travel creates a possibility for transformation through exposure to new cultures and ways of life. But it is easy to pass up that opportunity and flock toward familiarity instead, to head to a Starbucks in a foreign country or find solace from strange surroundings amongst fellow visitors.

The Transformation: How You Engage

Transformative travel requires openness. As more and more and more people seek programmed multicultural experiences— study abroad, volunteering, or simply sightseeing—it is important to evaluate your own goals and the goals of the organization. Responsible international travel necessitates embracing the discomfort and challenges of unfamiliarity, and also willingness to let go of your own authority: to follow the leadership of the locals and see the positive aspects of a community rather than perceived negatives.  To me, the most striking overseas experiences have involved connecting with people through common humanness despite apparent differences. These experiences, not traveling itself, are transformative.CFHIMapWhite

I was drawn to work with Child Family Health International (CFHI) because their global health programs promote an immersive experience through community-based projects and perspectives. Interning here and learning about CFHI programs over the past month has made me reflect on my own international experiences. I was born in the U.S. but since age nine I have lived abroad in different countries with my family. Though I have spent much of my life overseas, some who go abroad for shorter periods of time have had more intensive and challenging cultural experiences than mine. It can be easy to entrench yourself in an expat community and become complacent about pushing beyond that.

The study suggests benefits of international travel for your career; I don’t see my experiences overseas as having made me marketable, though I can’t complain if that is a byproduct. Rather, I see travel as the defining aspect of my life that has provided more unique challenges and rewards than anything else. CFHI’s motto encourages students to “Let the world change you,” instead of trying to change the world. It has and will continue to change me throughout my life. And maybe even get me some jobs too.

 

Special thanks to our guest blogger and CFHI Summer Intern Karoline Walter for authoring this post.

Internationalizing Medical Education: Shaping Healthcare Providers for Global Health

Internationalized Medical Education: How do we develop competency-based education and realize its full potential?  UN-recognized NGO Child Family Health International (CFHI) has been running global health education programs for over 20 years.  We have seen a lot along the way since our beginnings in a small garage in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Global Health and Study Abroad See Upward Trends

CFHI Uganda Program Photo Woman

Fast forward to 2014.  Global health has become a buzzword, conjuring up images of Bill and Melinda Gates projects and Partners in Health initiatives.  Once a field that rallied for press, global health is receiving increasing limelight.  Take a look on the Kaiser Family Foundation webinar on U.S. spending towards global health initiatives or the entire Center for Global Development event devoted to discussing Best Buys in Global Health. Global health teaching in undergrad and medical curricula is also increasing and the 2013 Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange, states study abroad by U.S. based students is steadily increasing and is at an all time high.   The Association of American Medical Colleges data demonstrates that 35% of US medical students participate in international experiences.  Spurred by increased participation, global health education is evolving from a phenomenon of one-off volunteer experiences to a field of educational theory and practice, shaping the world’s next generation of healthcare providers with skills demanded by an increasingly inter-connected world.

Looking at Competencies in Medical Education & How Students Engage

A study in the journal Academic Medicine shows the structure of global health programs, the degree to which they are imbedded in local health care systems, and having a capacity-building agenda, affects what students learn.  In an era where competency-based education is dominating pedagogy in medical education, we must leverage the richness of global health experiences to meet accreditation standards and competency-based outcomes.  Like studies have shown and CFHI’s 7,000 alumni can attest, global health exposure and international experiences make for better practitioners and global citizens.  CFHI’s approach leverages asset-based engagement and encourages students to “Let the World Change YOU.” stethescopeglobe

As we strive to meet demand and look at the nuances of programming, we must continue to examine students’ international experiences. This month thousands of international educators will gather at the NAFSA conference and discuss these topics at the Colloquium on Internationalizing Education for the Health Professions.  Here and on our own we must consider key questions—what competencies does a globalized health practitioner need?  What competencies are nurtured during global health programs? How do we wed international global health and what is taking place in our own back yards?  Just as important, not all global health experiences are created equal.  As educators and leaders in the field, we must advocate for socially responsible and ethically sound approaches to placing students in health settings abroad.

International Experiences: Witnessing the Merger of Public Health & Medicine

 

“Global Health is Public Health”

Nothing makes for fodder amongst academics and medial professionals like definitions.  In the case of global health there are more than a few.  One definition was put forth for the Executive Board of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) by Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, a physician, author and academic.  Another definition, offering a challenge to the often idealized concept, was proposed by a physician from the Global South as “a concept fabricated by developed countries to explain what is regular practice in developing nations.”  During this, the 19th annual National Public Health Week, let’s consider the definition of global health that appeared in The Lancet, “Global Health is Public Health.”

Students in Ecuador Attending a Reproductive Health Information Fair

Students in Ecuador Attending a Reproductive Health Information Fair

Abroad, physicians and other practitioners in resource-restricted settings act simultaneously as caregivers for both individual patients and populations as a whole.  The marriage of public health, clinical medicine, and health systems is cost-effective, pragmatic, and successful.  Slowly the US is catching on, as primary care physicians start to look at their patients, not only individually, but also as panels with certain disease profiles that can be monitored for population-based perspectives.  Similarly, experts have called on medical schools to be accountable to their communities in the Social Accountability of Medical Education movement, suggesting schools success cannot be measured without considering impacts on their own community’s health status.

Discovering Public Health in International Experiences

As head of Child Family Health International(CFHI), students interested in CFHI’s Global Health Education Programs often approach me and ask “What programs are focused on public health?” or conversely, “I want a program solely focused on clinical medicine, not public health.”  What they soon learn upon beginning their CFHI experience, however, is the important reality that in many low and middle-income countries the lines between public health and biomedicine are very much blurred.   This is largely out of necessity demanded by sparse or finite resources, as well as evidence-based and systems approaches to health.

International experiences focused on global health such as CFHI’s have so many proven benefits—studies have shown increased cultural competency, better understanding of caring for people with limited supplies, and a nurturing of lifetime dedication to underserved care.  Importantly, they also increase board scores in public health.  So, rather than asking “how can I find an international experience focused on public health?” consider the question, “how can I find the public health in my international experience?”

How have you found the public health in your international experiences?  Let us know in the comments below.