Chris Willott

BSc Course Tutor and Centre Coordinator, International Health and Medical Education Centre, University College of London

 

Global health is a discipline that is relatively new, but one which has captured the imaginations of medical students across Europe. Many students (and academics) feel that the traditional diet of anatomy, physiology, pharmacology and other biomedical disciplines fails to give medical students a rounded view of health and illness when they qualify. Issues such as poverty, inequality, access to medicines, globalisation and trade are rarely tackled in the core curriculum, and this leaves a large gap in students' knowledge. The gap can be filled through the teaching of global health, a discipline that helps students to understand the economic, social and cultural factors that underlie their patients' ill health.

 

Politics is said to be everywhere. For doctors, knowing why people are ill and how to prevent illness requires an understanding of the forces that shape global society, its health and healthcare. As Hans Rosling, Course Leader of the Global Health course at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm puts it, 'if geology teaches about volcanoes, and linguistics about Sanskrit, why should medicine maintain ignorance beyond national borders?' Furthermore, globalisation means that these national borders are becoming ever more porous, making global health teaching important for all, whether students go on to work for the WHO, MSF or as family doctors in Newcastle or Nijmegen. iThe desire for global health teaching among European medical students is now well established. But this desire has not been met by action in the vast majority of countries and universities. Global health teaching is still confined to a few institutions, and competition for places is therefore fierce, meaning that many interested students miss out. But experience has shown that without student action, global health teaching is unlikely to get into many more curricula.

 

In order to try and buck this trend, a group of medical students and academics from across Europe met in Geneva in October last year to debate this lack of teaching and devise a plan to help students to campaign for greater global health input in the undergraduate medical curriculum. The result was the formation of the Global Health Education Group, and a website, www.globalhealtheducation.org, which provides a number of resources useful to campaigning students. Chief among these resources is a policy paper, which outlines the group's aims, the what, why and how of global health, and case studies of already existing courses. The website also contains a comprehensive list of all courses in global health, international health and related disciplines in Europe and North America. For students who want to lobby their faculties for more global health teaching, there is a database of lecturers in global health topics from across the globe. There is also a link to the website of Medact, a charity that campaigns on a variety of global health issues, from where students can access the Global Health Studies pack, an introduction to global health for undergraduate students of medicine and nursing.

 

From the work of the Global Health Education group, a project, Think Global, has been set up under the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations (IFMSA). Think Global would like all medical students to have the opportunity to learn about global health. The project will offer IFMSA members increased opportunities to learn about global health issues that are relevant to their medical studies and their extracurricular activities (i.e. projects, exchanges and campaigns). It will also empower students to advocate for increased global health education within their own medical schools and countries. Students can get involved in both the Global Health Education Group and the IFMSA Think Global project. For more information, contact Bryony Whipp ( Dit e-mailadres is beschermd tegen spambots. U heeft Javascript nodig om het te kunnen zien. ).