Global Health Education Experience

Programs

MPH Program: Global Health Concentration

The Global Health Concentration is designed for students who anticipate studying, identifying, and solving public health problems in a global environment. It seeks to provide students an interdisciplinary set of skills; to prepare students to recognize biomedical, social, economic, and other factors that affect health; and to identify, design, monitor, and implement interventions that address health disparities. Most students graduating with this concentration are fully prepared to work in international settings and organizations. The Global Health concentration takes full advantage of the great breadth of Global Health related courses and scholarship at Tufts, which values active citizenship and internationalism.

Concentration Leader: Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD, MPH&TM

Christian Medical College/Vellore, India-Tufts MPH Program, Public Health Elective and Medical Global Health Track

The Department of Public Health & Family Medicine on behalf of Tufts University School of Medicine has entered into a cooperative agreement with the Christian Medical College (CMC)/Vellore, India to promote interest in the teaching and research activities of the respective institutions and to deepen the understanding at each institution of the economic, cultural and social issues related to its counterpart. To achieve these goals, Tufts and CMC are working together on the following initiatives: the development of a CMC-Tufts Masters of Public Health (MPH) Program; the development of a clinical public health elective for students enrolled in Tufts MD/MPH program; and the development of a track for students enrolled in the Global Health Initiative in the Tufts MPH program.

Contact Person: Harris Berman, MD

A Global Health Framework at Tufts University

This is a 3-year NIH-funded (Fogarty International Center) program to link all of the graduate schools at Tufts around the topic area of Global Health.

The program will: (1) Open a Concentration in Global Health in the Tufts MPH program (providing an academic home for the program; being rolled out this year); (2) Offer a core Global Health course open to all Tufts students (was offered for the first time spring 2006); (3) Hold workshops to promote interdisciplinary education and research at Tufts (first was held in September 2006 in Medford; will hold next ones in December in Boston and April or May in Grafton); (4) integrate Tufts courses with those of colleagues in East Africa and over time in South Africa, India, and other sites using the curriculum co-development model; and (5) provide $150,000 over 3 years for bilateral students exchanges with our international partners (we have supported 8 students in East Africa and 1 in India to date, and anticipate 3 students from East Africa in spring 2007).

Program Director: Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD MPH&TM

Innovative Curricula in Water & International Research

This is a 5-year NIH-funded "Roadmap" program to (1) develop and implement a 'health and water' curriculum in the new Tufts University 'Water: Systems, Science, and Society' interdisciplinary program, and (2) develop and implement novel interdisciplinary internet-based curricula linking Tufts University with East African public health educators, researchers, and institutions. The first aim has been accomplished with the implementation of MPH 241 Biology of Water and Health course which has an international focus and is co-taught with Prof. David Gute of the School of Engineering. The second aim is in progress, and has resulted in 3 workshops held in Kenya and 1 in Tanzania, and the exchange of 9 Tufts faculty members (to Africa) and 7 African University staff and faculty (to Boston) over the past 2.5 years. Through this program we are supplying key East African and Indian universities with servers equipped with the TUSK course management software developed at Tufts to provide a mechanism for this collaboration.

Program Director: Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD MPH&TM

Water: Systems, Science, and Society (WSSS) Program

This is an all-University interdisciplinary program focused on water. The purpose of the WSSS program is to provide the multidisciplinary perspectives and tools to manage water related problems. This program has a major international focus and we have supported MA and PhD students in Ethiopia, Ghana, Ecuador, and elsewhere.

Program Directors: Paul Kirshen, PhD (Engineering/Fletcher) and Beatrice Rogers, PhD (Nutrition), Medical School Coordinator: Jeffrey K. Griffiths MD MPH&TM

http://www.tufts.edu/water

The Quito Integrated Environment and Policy (QUIEP) Program

This 3-year NIH-funded program is an international collaboration that encourages the developmental and exploratory research and research capacity building in developing countries on topics that combine the issues of health, environment, and economic development in order to improve scientific understanding of the relationships between these topics and to help guide policy. Through this mechanism multiple faculty and student exchanges occurred, involving faculty and students at the Schools of Medicine, Engineering, and Fletcher.

Program Director: Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD MPH&TM

Internships/Fellowships

The Department of Public Health and Family Medicine (PH&FM) launched a new Global Health initiative during the summer of 2006 that includes student internship opportunities. Opportunities are available for Tufts University School of Medicine students in the MD/MPH, DVM/MPH, MPH and MS-Health Communication degree programs. Placements are also available at other times during the academic year. Available opportunities include:

Panama

This program has been developed in collaboration with the School of Medicine at Panama University (Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Nacional De Panama). Students will spend part of their day in language school studying Spanish with an emphasis on medical Spanish. From there, students will be assigned to a community health center in the Panama West Health Area, where they will have the opportunity to work as volunteers in activities such as: Web Baby Clinic, Prenatal Care Clinic, School Health Program and Environmental Health Programs.

Contact: Odilia Bermudez, PhD

East Africa

This project is an outgrowth of work in Curriculum Co-Development (CCD) that has been conducted by Dr. Jeffrey Griffiths, Associate Professor of Public Health and Family Medicine, over the past five years. Placement sites will be academically based at the Institute of Public Health at Makerere University Kampala (Uganda), and the School of Public Health at Muhimbili University College of Health Sciences in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Students will function as facilitators to assist faculty at the participating institutions with learning how to use TUSK, loading content into the servers, and in organizing discussion groups. Public health faculty members from the host institutions will be using TUSK in subsequent courses linking East African curricula and students with their Tufts counterparts.

Contact: Jeffrey K. Griffiths, MD, MPH&TM

Mangalore, India

Father Muller Medical College (http://www.fathermuller.com ) is collaborating with the PH&FM Department in planning and directing the pre-clinical, clinical and public health experiences in India. Types of potential educational experiences range from lectures about the health, nutrition and socioeconomic situation in India, visits to local hospitals, community health centers, and other medical facilities, including traditional and uniquely Indian health settings such as Ashrams.

As for pre-clinical or public health experiences, students may be assigned to a community health center in the Mangalore area, where they will have the opportunity to work as volunteers in activities such as: Well Baby Clinic; Prenatal Care clinic; School health program; Immunization campaigns in rural posts; Environmental health programs.

Contact: Harris Berman, MD

Hickey-Peyton International Travel Fellowship

The Hickey-Peyton Travel Fellowship was established through an anonymous gift to the Tufts School of Medicine to support students interested in public health research/activities in international settings. It is hoped that by taking advantage of this opportunity, students will gain a broader perspective about the roles of public health and medical care practice. Fellowships are awarded annually to first year medical students. Students must arrange for their own placements with a preceptor in the host country. Students are free to select whatever region or country they wish as long as there are no existing U.S. State Department travel warnings in force.

Contact: James Hyde, MA, SM