Going Global: Workshop on Providing Global Health Experiences to Residents Presented at Spring APDIM Meeting

With Drs. Cosco and Sam at the Association of Program
Directors in Internal Medicine conference in Orlando, Florida

I had the great opportunity to co-lead a workshop on providing global health experiences to residents at this week's Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine's Spring conference in Orlando, Florida.

With colleagues from Emory and Kaiser Permanente, we discussed barriers, resources and different models of providing global health experiences to internal medicine residents. The slides from our talk can be found here.

There is an enormous amount of interest in global health at both the medical student and resident levels; providing these experiences can be difficult, however. Some of the key issues include finding international partners, securing adequate funding, providing adequate supervision as well as many other logistical challenges.

To date, we have been able to provide global health experiences to approximately 60 medical and pharmacy students as well as over 20 internal medicine residents via the VCU Global Health & Health Disparities Program (GH2DP). Students and residents work with patients and communities in rural Honduras, where they participate in direct medical care and public health work.

We had a good turnout at the workshop and hope that we have created a framework via which medicine programs can continue to share ideas and best practices in providing global health experiences to residents moving forward.