12QUARTERLY
Spring 2009
13
by Dian Land
M
edical student Michelle Buelow ound the summer o 2007 tobe both challenging and extremely rewarding. It was just the global healthexperience she had hoped or. Withuture plans o practicing medicine in alow-resource setting either abroad or inthe United States, she wanted access toa public health learning opportunity in adeveloping country. And she wanted tosupplement it with a solid oundation o relevant coursework on campus.It was one o the many reasonsBuelow chose to attend the University o Wisconsin School o Medicine andPublic Health (SMPH), she says.“The school really values globalhealth,” says the Milwaukee native, who will earn a certicate in global health by the time she graduates in 2010.Buelow spent that summer ollowingher rst year o medical school inTegucigalpa, Honduras, working on aproject or a small non-governmentalorganization (NGO) that wanted tolocate and assess the needs o the poorestchildren living with or vulnerable toHIV/AIDS.Using the only map she couldnd—rom a tourist hotel—Buelow spent the next nine weeks interviewingpatients who came to the HIV clinic inthe public hospital or their medications,learning where the children lived aroundthe capital city and surveying actorsrelated to their daily lives and the carethey were—or were not—receiving.“Honduras is the second poorestcountry in the hemisphere,” saysBuelow, who also had been there beoreshe began medical school. “There is alack o inrastructure that is especially evident in the healthcare system.”
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In addition to helping conduct theHIV assessment that summer, Buelow trudged up the hills outside Tegucigalpato deliver mosquito abatement suppliesto people living in shacks to which water was piped only every 20 days. She andthe others warned the residents aboutthe dengue ever epidemic that hadfared up and how best to avoid it. Shealso shadowed a Honduran inectiousdisease specialist as he saw patients atthe vastly dierent public hospital andsemiprivate hospital.In a world that’s becomingincreasingly interconnected andinterdependent—and a country that’sattracting more and more immigrants—it’s no surprise that American medicalstudents are drawn to programs thatencourage them to do this kind o international learning.For SMPH students, the Center orGlobal Health (CGH) is the rst placethey oten begin their explorations.“We would like all medical studentsto be exposed to global health in oneorm or another,” says CGH directorCynthia Haq, MD, SMPH proessoro amily medicine. “Global healthexperiences enhance physicians’ abilitiesno matter where they practice.”The center reaches out, in act, to allUW-Madison health sciences students,oering a continuum o options.Students can begin by dropping inon any number o global health lectures,seminars and symposia. One o the many selections rom the past year includedDr. Linnea Smith’s (MD ’84) descriptiono her clinic in Peruvian Amazonia.On the CGH Web site, http://www.pophealth.wisc.edu/gh/, students canalso nd a variety o resources, rom acomprehensive global health bibliograpy to links to interactive Web sites.For deeper involvement, medicalstudents oten choose to supplementtheir standard MD courses, particularly during years one and two, withelective courses oered by teachersrom across campus. Courses span thespectrum, with titles such as “GlobalEnvironmental Change and DiseaseRisk,” “Clinical and Public HealthMicrobiology” and “World Hunger andMalnutrition.” Approximately 60 medical studentsgo on to participate in credit-basedglobal health eld study each year. Someenroll in aculty-led group courses atsites where the CGH has establishedruitul ongoing relationships, as inUganda, Thailand, Mexico and Ecuador.Others, like Buelow, may choose todo independent eld experiences. Thoseoccurring ater the students’ rst yearusually ocus on public health and healtheducation, with some clinical shadowing.International clinical rotations typically occur during the ourth or late third year, ater students have acquired clinicalskills through their amily medicine,pediatrics and obstetrics rotations.CGH sta and aculty aliates assiststudents at all stages with placement,planning, mentoring and academic andcultural orientation. Independent globalhealth eld experiences and clinicalrotations have taken place in Uganda,Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, India,Thailand, China, Vietnam, Ecuador,Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.“In all these exposures, students arelearning about diversity and poverty and
Michelle Buelow interviews a patient at the HIV clinic within the public hospital (opposite) in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Nate Gundacker meets a family of farmers outside Guadalajara, Mexico. Connie Gundacker visits with another farmer as part of the research project.
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