Goals and Description

The overarching goal of this program is to help nurture and train future global health professionals while simultaneously helping to improve health care training in partner countries. Beginning with the strong foundation the Penn-Botswana program has built, we plan to expand this program to incorporate other rich international health experiences. The program will also include instruction in a basic global health curriculum, mentorship, support for scholarly activities and interaction with the broader global health community.

Residents will apply for this program in the fall of PGY1 and will enter the two-year long program as PGY-2’s.

Curriculum Components

Residents will participate in a month-long course in global health featuring lecturers from the Penn community as well as from the broader global health community.

On-going curriculum will also include:

• Journal clubs lead by global health program residents
• Longitudinal web-based curriculum including:
  • Cases focusing on tropical and neglected diseases
  • Case studies and questions about current policy issues in global health

Abroad experience
Each resident will spend a minimum of six weeks in abroad in their PGY3 year and between 4-6 weeks abroad in the PGY2 year.

Sites include: Botswana and a public health research site in Uganda

• Botswana: Resident responsibilities will include direct clinical care of patients in Princess Marina Hospital, a busy public hospital in the capital, Gaborone. Residents will be expected to help with intern education and supervision. A major goal of the Penn-Botswana partnership is to build sustainable, quality health education and work with health providers and the government of Botswana to strengthen health care at Princess Marina Hospital.
• Kenya: Residents will work at Mbagathi District Hospital, the public district hospital for Nairobi with experiences offered in both inpatient medicine and outpatient HIV clinic. Residents will also have the opportunity to work with local Kenyan NGOs to investigate public health questions pertaining to health system development and health workforce. Several projects are underway through the World Health Organization and residents will have the opportunity to work on these projects.
• Guatemala: Residents will work at the Hospitalito Atitlan in Santiago Atitlan to provide clinical care and health education to the local population. The Hospitalito is a small private facility that provides outpatient, inpatient and emergency care to residents of the surrounding region. As most patients are impoverished, care is provided on a sliding scale and in some cases, free.
• Dominican Republic (2 sites): Residents will work at the Centro de Salud in Consuelo, a small town an hour east of the capital. Residents will work with attendings to provide clinical outpatient general medical care to the Consuelo population. Additionally, residents will work with the direct of the mobile outreach medical program to travel to the surrounding sugar cane fields to provide regular continuity care to the sugar cane workers and their families.
• Additional international time and sites are under development.

Residents will work at CEPROSH, a full-service HIV care and treatment center in the city of Puerto Plata. Residents will work with attendings to provide clinical care to people living with HIV and will also go on outreach visits to sugar cane field sites on the border of Haiti.

Second Continuity Clinics
In addition to the resident’s primary continuity clinic, global health program residents will work in a second continuity clinic site focused on issues of community health and immigrant health. Residents will ONLY go to these clinics when they are on a non-call rotation. Sites include:

• Prevention Point Philadelphia: Providing health care at Philadelphia needle exchange sites
• Philadelphia Health Department: STI/HIV and TB clinic
• Correction medicine (health care in the Philadelphia prison system)
• Health care for the homeless
• Migrant health and immigrant health care

Scholarly project

Residents are encouraged to complete a scholarly project under the mentorship of a Penn faculty member. This project may focus on clinical research, policy work or programmatic questions. Where appropriate, residents are supported to work closely with partner organizations outside of the University to complete these projects.

Career building

The global health program also aims to foster relationships between program participants and experts in the field of global health. The program will help provide mentorship in career development.

Specific inquiries about the primary care program can be addressed to:

Jennifer Cohn, M.D.
Division of Infectious Diseases
Department of Medicine
Johnson Pavilion
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 615 0776
jennifer.cohn@uphs.upenn.edu