Global Health / Peds Residency Programs

[caffeineaholic]

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Anyone know of peds residency programs with strong global health components (i.e. allow international clinical or research rotations & have longer-term research collaborations/partnerships with academic institutions in resource-poor areas)?

I looked online and found an AMSA site with international health residencies, but the peds section only had two institutions (Case/University Hospitals & UMN).

I know of some institutions with international academic collaborations, but am unaware of whether their peds programs are part of such collaborations, like UNC, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, UCSF, etc.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone who had looked into this themselves due to interest in global health, OR from people at peds programs that might have such a component (even if they are not personally interested in pursuing that component themselves).

Thanks!

 

[deleted311769]

Almost every residency program I interviewed at hyped global health, because that's the popular thing to do. Pretty much everywhere said you can go to established or new international sites for a rotation, but when pressed, many admit that you don't get paid while you are away, or they only let a small group actually do international rotations due to scheduling constraints, or if they provide funding, it's really competitive to get. Some of these programs have tracks that you can become a part of once in residency, with extra lectures or activities. They also may be combined with internal med/family med/EM residents.

The strongest program I saw was at Baylor. Every resident, starting next year, will have a month-long paid and funded "underserved" rotation. The assumption is that most residents will go to one of the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative sites. Residents who don't want to go international can also go to domestic locations. They also have a Global Health Track in the match. I think they take 4 residents a year into it. These residents will spend an additional year in Africa as part of the BIPAI program. They also have the year round meetings and other activities.

 

[TexasRose]

I was going to say Baylor, but pediperson beat me to it. 🙂

 

[goinginpeds2011]

Every place I looked at/applied (all big academic centers) had some global health opportunities. All of them had you use your call free elective/academic time (as obviously you won't be able to take call at home when you were abroad) - some people cautioned me that some programs forced you to use vacation time but I never encountered this. Some programs had more call free elective time than others. The big differentiating factor I found is whether you just want clinical experiences abroad or whether you are interested in more academic global health and the latter is a bit more difficult to find.

I have heard that Baylor's program is great and they have a 4-year pediatric global health residency you can look into. Other programs that I applied to (on the coasts) that had strong academic global health ties include UCSF, Seattle, CHOP, and BCRP, and Columbia. This is obviously not an inclusive list but gives you an idea that there are numerous places. Other programs had less academically focused set up global health programs that were very substantial (for example a large number of residents I spoke to at Hopkins had gone on the funded trips abroad). And then there were programs that had with what I would consider global health rotations in the US (that ranged from WWAMI at Seatle, IHS at Hopkins, Boston based refugee/global health rotation at BCRP). Many had specific programs but most were fine if you did it self-directed.

I think the best advice I got was to decide what was important to me knowing I have limited time in residency. Do you need lectures for your knowledge or to invigorate you or will they be a repeat from prior experiences? Do you need career mentorship? Do you need connections to sites? Do you need set up programs..and in particular areas of the world? Do you need skills to provide care, teach local providers, do research, etc? Is it better to do some things after residency when you can dedicate more time to them? Although I would want to have exposure to all sorts of things in global health it is not feasible to do everything adequately into an already packed 3 year residency. Reflect what is the most important for you to do while you are in residency. This is not your last chance to do global health and most people who do global health as a career did a residency where it wasn't a focus. Now there are pediatric global health fellowship too (Baylor is most established, CHOP and BCRP have newer ones, there are probably others).

On a side note: I personally think the funding issue is pretty minute as every place I interviewed at you still get your salary and if you can't invest the cost of travel into going it probably wasn't that important to you. Funding can be a measure of tangible show of support of the program though.

 

[cdsolution]

Just fyi, a group of students at the Indiana University School of Medicine is trying to put together lists of global health residency programs with some relevant info for applicants. The peds listing is here:

https://ghsig.usg.iupui.edu/Residen...obalHealthResidencies/tabid/2315/Default.aspx

There are only a few programs listed so far, but if you have more to add, we would appreciate the help! Our e-mail address is: [email protected]. Thanks!

 

[lockjaw]

Of the places that I interviewed at, UMass seemed to have the strongest international ties. Rochester is also starting a global health track for this upcoming year.