Professional Documents
Culture Documents
In addition to helping conduct the of family medicine. “Global health Approximately 60 medical students
HIV assessment that summer, Buelow experiences enhance physicians’ abilities go on to participate in credit-based
trudged up the hills outside Tegucigalpa no matter where they practice.” global health field study each year. Some
to deliver mosquito abatement supplies The center reaches out, in fact, to all enroll in faculty-led group courses at
to people living in shacks to which water UW-Madison health sciences students, sites where the CGH has established
was piped only every 20 days. She and offering a continuum of options. fruitful ongoing relationships, as in
the others warned the residents about Students can begin by dropping in Uganda, Thailand, Mexico and Ecuador.
the dengue fever epidemic that had on any number of global health lectures, Others, like Buelow, may choose to
flared up and how best to avoid it. She seminars and symposia. One of the many do independent field experiences. Those
also shadowed a Honduran infectious selections from the past year included occurring after the students’ first year
disease specialist as he saw patients at Dr. Linnea Smith’s (MD ’84) description usually focus on public health and health
the vastly different public hospital and of her clinic in Peruvian Amazonia. education, with some clinical shadowing.
semiprivate hospital. On the CGH Web site, http://www. International clinical rotations typically
In a world that’s becoming pophealth.wisc.edu/gh/, students can occur during the fourth or late third
increasingly interconnected and also find a variety of resources, from a year, after students have acquired clinical
interdependent—and a country that’s comprehensive global health bibliograpy skills through their family medicine,
attracting more and more immigrants— to links to interactive Web sites. pediatrics and obstetrics rotations.
it’s no surprise that American medical For deeper involvement, medical CGH staff and faculty affiliates assist
students are drawn to programs that students often choose to supplement students at all stages with placement,
encourage them to do this kind of their standard MD courses, particularly planning, mentoring and academic and
international learning. during years one and two, with cultural orientation. Independent global
For SMPH students, the Center for elective courses offered by teachers health field experiences and clinical
Global Health (CGH) is the first place from across campus. Courses span the rotations have taken place in Uganda,
they often begin their explorations. spectrum, with titles such as “Global Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, India,
“We would like all medical students Environmental Change and Disease Thailand, China, Vietnam, Ecuador,
to be exposed to global health in one Risk,” “Clinical and Public Health Mexico, Guatemala and Belize.
form or another,” says CGH director Microbiology” and “World Hunger and “In all these exposures, students are
Cynthia Haq, MD, SMPH professor Malnutrition.” learning about diversity and poverty and
by Dian Land It was one of the many reasons Using the only map she could
Buelow chose to attend the University find—from a tourist hotel—Buelow
Before beginning her research, surgery resident Jaime McCord (in red) observes activities in the “trauma room” at a teaching hospital in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Touring the countryside later, McCord is happy with the outcome after treating a young girl who had been bitten badly by a dog.