Global health is becoming an increas-ingly important factor at the Univer-sity. With partnerships in countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Uganda, Guyana, Tanzania and the Philippines, the University's Center for Global Health collaborates with governments, health organizations and other universities to promote a worldwide healthcare network.
"This time is so ripe, because the University is becoming more global in general, and health is so important in those goals," third-year College student Temi Awosogba said.
For 28 years, the Center has sought to establish student-faculty mentorships, support resource-limited projects, train international fellows from collaborating institutions in developing nations and to report on leading issues in international health.
Informing students about this emerging field is a key aim of the center, according to its Web site. Along with University Career Services, the center recently co-sponsored a panel discussion, titled "Careers in Global Medicine." The forum provided a discourse in which both medical doctors and students participated. Panelists responded directly to questions from medical, graduate and undergraduate students.
Awosogba said she appreciated the insight the panelists provided, since she has ambitions to go to medical school and would like to pursue global health.
"I was really excited in general about having the opportunity to meet people who represent a small community of global health," Awosogba said. "It was nice to get their perspective. For me, it was great because that is what I want to do. I'm always interested in getting a sense of what people who work in global health feel about it, whether or not they think it's important to create sustainable development. I was happy to find that a lot of them are interested in training people from abroad so that they can help their own people, which I think is the real goal of global health."
The panelists primarily offered professional and personal insights about their chosen careers. Panelist Dr. David Burt, assistant professor of emergency medicine, has experience in international medicine.
"My interest in global health started around the middle of my last year of medical school when I decided to take a year off and to go and work in a small hospital in the highlands of Guatemala," Burt said. "I think that for me, it was a huge change and something that jump-started me on probably a life-long involvement."
Burt said he would like to contribute to the center's overseas initiatives.
"Now coming back to the University, one of the things I'd like to do is keep going back and to try to help the University establish relationships where we can do exchanges with these types of places," Burt said.
Dr. Rebecca Kightlinger, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, spoke about her involvement in what she considers to be a rewarding career. Having initially been involved with short-term medical mission trips to Mexico doing primary care, Kightlinger now leads the Cervical Cancer Team of Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, making several trips to Guyana a year.
Kightlinger explained the need for the initiatives in the country.
"A large population of women in the indigenous cultures in Guyana, South America, had all of these terrible pap-smears, and they needed someone who could possibly do cervical colonization, an out-patient procedure when you remove an abnormal portion of the cervix," Kightlinger said.
Kightlinger said she originally agreed to travel there without knowing exactly what to expect.
"These women had never seen doctors and had never had pap-smears, and they live way out in these remote regions of Guyana," she said.
While there, Kightlinger discovered an opportunity that, until then, she had not known existed.
"We went around and we did these procedures and realized, that for some reason, cervical cancer looks different ... there than it does here at home," she said. "So that was what really hooked me, that and the fact that these women had never been taken care of before and had such a high rate of cervical cancer."
Kightlinger spoke about being able to pursue the option of doing work overseas even if others have doubts about the idea. She advised students thinking about a career in global health to say, "I serve globally," emphasizing the importance of staying persistent and focused for individuals who would like to pursue a similar path.
Before Dr. Sharon Meth began her own outpatient practice of internal medicine at Martha Jefferson Hospital last year, she worked on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona for three years. After completing her residency training at the University's Medical School and receiving training from professors involved with the center, Meth sought a non-standard route early on in her career.
"Not knowing exactly what I wanted to do when I finished, but knowing I didn't want just to go straight into a regular job, my husband, who's also an internist, and I decided to look into various alternative options," Meth said. "The Indian Health Service kept coming up as something that would work for us ... We sort of took a leap of faith."
Working in an arid region only accessible by a five-hour car ride presented Meth with an experience that was sometimes like living in another country.
"It's probably one of the remotest places you can live in the U.S., except for maybe some of the clinics in Alaska," she said.
In addition to adjusting to a new medical community, Meth also had to adjust to a new culture as well.
"You realize that people in the community aren't necessarily happy that you're there and won't necessarily realize what you're giving up to be there," Meth said, adding that it takes time to establish oneself and that it is important to be patient in the process.
As a tenured professor of internal medicine and collaborator at the center, Dr. Michael Scheld has been at the University for more than half his life.
"I like to think I've been in global health since I started medical school, because there's a broad definition of global health: help for the disparity and care for the disenfranchised," Scheld said.
He attributed his first taste of international medicine to his mentor, Dr. Richard Grant, who trained him in internal medicine and infectious diseases. At the end of his fellowship, Scheld went to Brazil for a month. Since then he has worked in Indonesia, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria. The majority of his time abroad he has allotted to conducting and overseeing research of HIV and AIDS at the Infectious Disease Institute in Uganda.
After several years at the University and at the center, Scheld has trained many young doctors, including Meth. He has also served as the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and as the co-director of the training program of the Academic Alliance for AIDS Care and Prevention in Africa.
Scheld advised students who are interested in careers in global medicine to be persistent as they pursue opportunities to do work overseas. There are many opportunities, he said, including electives in medical school and even residencies abroad under the guidance of trained, board-certified doctors.
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