The World Health Student Organization and Global Health Alliance have announced a new Global Health Practioner Speaker Series slated through run the first half of next year.

The series seeks to raise student awareness of what it means to be a practitioner in the field of global health through an experiential lens. The program compliments the Global and Urban Health Equity curriculum, but is a separate initiative open to all members of the medical campus. The virtual presentations will feature diverse global health clinicians, public health experts, advocates, community-based advocates and policy-makers from around the world for an intimate hour of storytelling to share experiences, successes and failures, and lessons learned from the field.

The Nov. 6 meeting will feature Robert Harris Gilman, M.D., who has led pediatric reconstructive teams to Colombia for more than 20 years and has taken several Michigan residents with him, mentoring them as the team provides surgical correction of deformities of the face, such as cleft lip and palate, burn scar contractures, and congenital and acquired deformities. In addition to clinical medicine, he engages in educational and public health initiatives. Zoom link here.

Programs are scheduled to take place from noon to 1 p.m. the first Friday of each month. Meeting details and speakers will be announced as the series progresses.

The lineup includes:

Dec. 4: Global health practitioner career path: Learn how to incorporate global health into U.S.-based medical education and practice.

Jan. 8, 2021: Interdisciplinary practice: Learn how to include representatives of diverse constituencies in global health trips and foster interactive learning with these partners. Demonstrate the benefit of interprofessional medical practice in global health.

Feb. 5: Global local similarities: Describe how global trends in health care practice, commerce and culture, multinational agreements and multinational organizations contribute to the quality and availability of health and health care locally and internationally.

March 5: Ethical challenges: Understand the application of basic principles of ethics to global health issues and settings.

April 2: Pandemic preparation: Develop an understanding and awareness of how to prevent a health care crisis in the COVID-19 pandemic.

May 7: Advocacy and government: Understand how to work effectively within diverse cultural settings and international political landscapes.

June 4: Adaptation of clinical skills in resource-limited settings: Demonstrate the ability to adapt clinical or discipline-specific skills and practice in a resource-constrained setting.

July 2: Technology and health: Understand the role of medical technology and its application in resource-constrained environments.