Sponsor
This work was supported by the Mark and Lisa Schwartz Foundation, the Klingenstein Family Foundation, and the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research NIAID P30 AI060354. Dr Bangsberg was supported by K24 MH87227. Dr Walensky was supported by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases R01 AI058736. Dr R. Bergmark and Dr B. Bergmark received funding through Benjamin Kean Traveling Fellowships from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. All authors receive a portion of their salary from global health activities. Dr Tsai receives salary support from NIH K23 MH–096620.
Published In
Journal of Global Health
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-2013
Subjects
World health, Health promotion, International cooperation, Medicine -- Specialties and specialists -- Training of
Physical Description
9 pages
Abstract
Background: Rapid growth in global health activity among US medical specialty education programs has lead to heterogeneity in types of activities and global health training models. The breadth and scope of this activity is not well chronicled.
Methods: Using a standardized search protocol, we examined the characteristics of US medical residency global health programs by number of programs, clinical specialty, nature of activity (elective, research, extended curriculum based field training), and geographic location across seven different clinical medical residency education specialties. We tabulated programmatic activity by clinical discipline, region and country. We calculated the Spearman's rank correlation coefficient to estimate the association between programmatic activity and country–level disease burden.
Results: Of the 1856 programs assessed between January and June 2011, there were 380 global health residency training programs (20%) working in 141 countries. 529 individual programmatic activities (elective–based rotations, research programs, extended curriculum– based field training, or other) occurred at 1337 specific sites. The majority of the activities consisted of elective–based rotations. At the country level, disease burden had a statistically significant association with programmatic activity (Spearman's ρ = 0.17) but only explained 3% of the total variation between countries.
Conclusions: There were a substantial number of US medical specialty global health programs, but a relative paucity of surgical and mental health programs. Elective–based programs were more common than programs that offer longitudinal experiences. Despite heterogeneity, there was a small but statistically significant association between program location and the global burden of disease. Areas for further study include the degree to which US–based programs develop partnerships with their program sites, the significance of this activity for training, and number and breadth of programs in medical specialty global health education in other countries around the world.
DOI
10.7189/jogh.03.020406
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/18537
Publisher
Edinburgh University Global Health Society
Citation Details
33. Kerry VB, Walensky RP, Tsai AC, Bergmark RW, Bergmark BA, Rouse C, Bangsberg DR. US medical specialty global health training and the global burden of disease. J Glob Health. 2013 Dec;3(2):020406. doi: 10.7189/jogh.03.020406. PubMed PMID: 24363924; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3868823
Included in
Community Health Commons, Medical Education Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons
Description
At the time of writing, David Bangsberg was affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital and the Mbarara University of Science and Technology.
Originally appeared in the Journal of Global Health, vol. 3, no. 2, 2013; published by Edinburgh University Global Health Society.