What do you do with global health?

[Funke]

So, I see Global Health fellowships, and people in a variety of specialties ask for residencies with strong global health components. What do you actually do after said residency/fellowship? Do you essentially become a faculty member who travels and researches global health topics? Or do some people actually commit their career to being a doctor in medically undeveloped locations? How do they make a living or pay off debt?

Just a few questions, hoping to get some insight and maybe some discussions. Thanks!

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[wholeheartedly]

This is just based on my limited experience while working on my MPH. I know of one guy who is an ID doc who teaches in the epidemiology department locally and does international research in a few countries on HIV, he used to do clinical practice but just does teaching and research right now. Another ID doc does clinical practice in peds ID, is faculty for the ID fellowship, and does malaria research in Africa. There's a guy who is an EM doc who did a global health fellowship who helped start clinics in another country for a year and now started a new global health fellowship at his residency alma matter. He seems to be overseeing some stuff at the clinic he started along with acting as faculty for the EM program and fellowship while doing clinical practice.

Other people do work with groups that provide care in other countries either on a full-time or part-time basis. I think I read on here about one doc who did 3-6 months overseas and then did locums work in the states.

 

[mzarrowsmith]

So, I see Global Health fellowships, and people in a variety of specialties ask for residencies with strong global health components. What do you actually do after said residency/fellowship? Do you essentially become a faculty member who travels and researches global health topics? Or do some people actually commit their career to being a doctor in medically undeveloped locations? How do they make a living or pay off debt?

Just a few questions, hoping to get some insight and maybe some discussions. Thanks!

This is a pretty good overview of some of the options:

http://globalhealtheducation.org/resources_OLD/Pages/GlobalHealthCareer.aspx

Here's the general resources page:

http://globalhealtheducation.org/resources/SitePages/Home.aspx

 

[Funke]

Thanks, great resource!

 

[wholeheartedly]

yeah, definitely thanx!!

 

[Food]

This is just based on my limited experience while working on my MPH. I know of one guy who is an ID doc who teaches in the epidemiology department locally and does international research in a few countries on HIV, he used to do clinical practice but just does teaching and research right now. Another ID doc does clinical practice in peds ID, is faculty for the ID fellowship, and does malaria research in Africa. There's a guy who is an EM doc who did a global health fellowship who helped start clinics in another country for a year and now started a new global health fellowship at his residency alma matter. He seems to be overseeing some stuff at the clinic he started along with acting as faculty for the EM program and fellowship while doing clinical practice.

Other people do work with groups that provide care in other countries either on a full-time or part-time basis. I think I read on here about one doc who did 3-6 months overseas and then did locums work in the states.

did you do your MPH while in medical school, or before? I'm in the midst of third year medical school and have started working on an MPH application, with the aim of doing something in global health - but am not really sure exactly how to approach writing a PS statement for it. I've done some minor international work but most of my ECs have focused on domestic policy (AMA stuff) and wasn't sure how much it would matter. Did you focus in global health or some other area?

 

[deleted6669]

currently about half way through a doctorate in global health. will likely do a combination of teaching and overseas work when done. also considering a few postdoc fellowships(cdc, etc).

 

[wholeheartedly]

did you do your MPH while in medical school, or before? I'm in the midst of third year medical school and have started working on an MPH application, with the aim of doing something in global health - but am not really sure exactly how to approach writing a PS statement for it. I've done some minor international work but most of my ECs have focused on domestic policy (AMA stuff) and wasn't sure how much it would matter. Did you focus in global health or some other area?

I'm doing it before and am not in medical school yet. (unique work/life circumstances behind that decision). I'm working on my MPH part-time while I work and my employer is kicking in some funding so I only applied to my local state school's MPH program for the epidemiology track, although I guess it is pretty highly ranked.

I'm not sure how applicable my experiences would be, but I just wrote honestly about how I decided to do the epi MPH and what direction I wanted to go with it, highlighting some experiences that steered me that way. I have strong interests in global health and am doing the global health concentration, but definitely hadn't done any international work at application time. There's a public health forum on here that might have more info on how different programs weight parts of their applications. I'm not sure how heavily my program weighed the PS compared to others. They seemed more focussed on my experiences with stats and quant. score on the GRE since epi is very quantitative, along with knowing what the heck epi really was. Other programs seems to weight experiences like volunteering and PS stuff more highly.

 

[mzarrowsmith]

currently about half way through a doctorate in global health. will likely do a combination of teaching and overseas work when done. also considering a few postdoc fellowships(cdc, etc).

Are you planning to do clinical work or teaching/project management overseas?

 

[deleted6669]

Are you planning to do clinical work or teaching/project management overseas?

probably a bit of both.
might do this for a year:
http://www.lalmba.org/volunteer.html
this sounds appealing:
PA's licensed to practice in the US or Canada are needed for our Medical Director positions in both Ethiopia and Kenya.

I have spoken with these folks. the director practices clinically in addition to running the facility for a year. sounds like great experience.