To address this urgent issue, Lisa Alexander, P.A., M.P.H., Ed.D., assistant dean for community-based partnerships at The George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist. Through her award, Dr. Alexander will assist in the development of Rwanda’s first non-physician clinician training program at the Kegali Health Institute (KHI) by providing technical assistance and consultation services to the Rwandan Ministry of Health and KHI.

 

“The country is already training physicians, but it takes a long time to get a physician trained,” said Dr. Alexander. “Fortunately, not every patient’s needs require a physician’s attention.” By training what will be the Rwandan equivalent to physician assistants, the country will cultivate health care professionals who are qualified to assess patients, make diagnoses, prescribe appropriate treatments, and undertake minor surgical procedures. And, most importantly, these professionals can be trained in less than half the time it would take to train a doctor.

 

The Maternal Mortality Conference in May, which was co-hosted by the GW Africa Center, brought new light and a sense of immediacy to the longstanding need for more health care workers in Rwanda. “At the conference, the Rwandan Ministry was pushed to say, ‘we need to address maternal mortality, we need to address workforce issues, let’s do it’,” said Dr. Alexander, who has worked with Rwanda through the Africa Center for the past three years and has a supportive relationship with the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda. “There is a great willingness on the part of the government and the physicians to really champion this program. It’s critical that you get the support from all of these stakeholders in order to welcome and adopt this new type of health professional,” she said.

 

Dr. Alexander will develop her program over the course of a year—split into three 14-day trips—and will meet with members of the Ministry of Health, collaborate with faculty members at the rural training site, and plan the curriculum, which will adopt a rural health training focus. Eventually, a new generation of professionals will take hold in one of the few countries in which mid-level health care staff  have not been trained—until now.  “It will be exciting to see the physicians embrace this new cadre of health professionals and to really get excited about having the help that they so desperately need,” said Dr. Alexander.

 

Dr. Alexander is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program. This program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities (two to six weeks) to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post secondary academic institutions around the world.