(8) Global Health Made Local: Social Accountability in practice in Medical curriculum

         Seema Biswas, Keren Mazuz, Mark Clarfield, Miki Alkin, Tzvi Dwolatzsky

The Medical School for International Health, Ben Gurion University

 

The Medical School for International Health, Ben Gurion University, Beer Sheva has a four year integrated Global Health and Medicine curriculum. The course is designed for students (mainly from the United States of America) with a particular interest in Global Health but the aim is to teach Global Health through direct engagement with the local community. From as early as the first term of the first year, students are assigned "complex patients" - patients from all ethnicities and backgrounds in Israel with biomedical and social issues that require intervention.
The purpose of the program is three fold: 1) students learn to communicate with patients of different ethnicities and backgrounds; 2) students learn about complex social, political and economic problems affecting patients through real-life and real-time experience; 3) students begin to comprehend how patients view their lives, illness and disability. As one student summarized the experience: "what is the point of advising patients on a particular course of treatment when you have no idea whether they can afford it, would find it acceptable, or whether they have the support they need to stick with it? Doctors need to really understand their patients".  
Our ambition is that our medical students really understand their patients, their local communities and environment. Our goal is that the community feels both served and partnered with the medical school. Achieving this partnership locally bodes well for doctors who must go on to serve diverse communities worldwide.

 

 

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