Global Health
Track Curriculum 2009/10
The Global Health Track is designed to increase students' awareness about international health systems, regional diseases and to learn how to assess the specific health needs of countries at various stages of development.
Track Objectives:
At the completion of this track, students will be able to:
- Gain basic understanding of the relationship of demographics indicators to health and disease
- Gain knowledge of various regional diseases
- Gain an introduction to the study of community and public health, primary care, health care for the underserved, epidemiology, as well as infectious and tropical diseases
- Provide international experiences and training that would expose students to diverse cultures that can help them broaden their own cultural perspectives
- Learn how to communicate more effectively with the increasingly diverse patient populations they work with in the U.S.
Track Activities
Required First & Second Year
- Attend lecture series
- Participate in an Experiential Opportunity in the Summer following first year
- Students must submit a project proposal including scope of work, a timeline, objectives/goals, and the organization/mentor with which the student will be working including contact information.
- After project completion, students are required to submit a 2-4 page paper to include the student’s project scope, the role the student played in the project, how the project changed from the original proposal, and reflections on the experience.
Required Third & Fourth Year
- Practice of Medicine Scholarly Project will be related to track of study
- Global Health related elective (4 – 8 weeks)
Other Activities
- Publishing opportunities working with track mentors
- Attend Global Health workshops, seminars and conferences at IAD, PAHO and/or the World Bank; participating in interest groups; etc.
Track Lecture Series
Topic Areas for Years I & II (sampling)
- Epidemiology and demographics, comparison of health indicators between developed and developing countries
- Health and the Millennium Development Goals: A Long, Long Way to Go
- Maternal Health, challenges and opportunities and access to health service, community involvement
- Child mortality rate, comparisons between developed and underdeveloped countries. Review of causes (i.e., water-borne diseases, access to health) programs to reduce mortality
- Communicable diseases, HIV/AIDS and the challenges and opportunities (ART = Antiretroviral Therapy)
- Effects of the international efforts to fight HIV/AIDS on human resources in Africa
- Environmental sustainability, safe drinking water and basic sanitation
- The Effects of toxic waste, exportation on environmental health in developing countries ( Latin America )
- Integrative Medicine, background and comparison/western medicine
- Infectious diseases, challenges in detecting and managing infectious diseases outbreaks and monitoring prevalence of endemic diseases
- Effects of global terrorism on health, dirty bombs, biological threats
- Obstacles and opportunities in raising health and education levels
Experiential Opportunities
Summer Internships/Senior Elective Host Sites (sampling)
- Child and Family Health International
- Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- Tropical Medicine research opportunity in Brazil for hookworm vaccine clinical trials
- GW Medical Missions to Haiti, Rwanda, Eritrea…
- Medical Missions throughout the globe with a multitude of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
- Course in Border Health through the University of Texas Health Science Center
- Operation Smile Missions
- Spanish language immersion program with medical terminology
Country Locations (sampling)
Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Himalayas, Japan, India, Lebanon, Malta, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Vietnam
*Other educational opportunities and activities to enrich students’ experiences may be added to the curriculum during the program, per the discretion of the Track Director