Global Health Collaboration Makes Cross-Sector Educational Approaches a Reality

Bay Area Non-profit Child Family Health International partners with the Consortium of Universities for Global Health to deliver a 6-part training series for Global Health Educators

​A recognized obstacle in addressing the Global Health challenges of our time, including the over 6,000,000 preventable child deaths and 300,000 maternal mortalities a year worldwide, is that our education system is hampered by silos preventing cross-discipline educational approaches.  The rise of Global Health as a field of education, research, and practice aims to break down these silos. A collaboration between Bay Area non-profit leader Child Family Health International and the Washington-based Consortium of Universities for Global Health provides a key tool to overcoming this hurdle.

The two visionary organizations have joined forces to provide a Faculty Development Webinar Series entitled “Teaching Global Health Through an Interprofessional Lens.”  The series presents the contributions of six fields to global health in a manner that allows other disciplines to disseminate core concepts, vocabulary, and case studies.

To solve the world's most pressing issues we need to go upstream of problems to reform our education systems to ensure we are preparing the leaders of tomorrow to understand the breadth of knowledge and competency including inter-professional respect and collaboration that innovative, sustainable and culturally-relevant solutions require.

Dr. Jessica Evert, Executive Director, CFHI

According to the series moderator and CFHI Executive Director, Dr. Jessica Evert, “to solve the world’s most pressing issues we need to go upstream of problems to reform our education systems to ensure we are preparing the leaders of tomorrow to understand the breadth of knowledge and competency including inter-professional respect and collaboration that innovative, sustainable and culturally-relevant solutions require.”

The series launched on Thursday, October 20th with the Global Health Law episode, which is available now.  The episodes for Global Health & Anthropology and Global Health & Engineering are scheduled for December 7th and January 31st respectively, with the remaining episodes will be announced on CUGH’s websites.  Recordings will be available afterwards on the organizations’ websites.

“Creating open access webinars and other educational products is part of CUGH’s effort to strengthen the training of tomorrow's global health leaders.  This collaboration with CFHI is enabling us to share the expertise of some of the most dynamic leaders across disciplines with global health actors across the globe," comments Dr. Keith Martin, Executive Director of CUGH. 

About Child Family Heatlh International

Founded in 1992, CFHI (http://www.cfhi.org) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) operating at the grassroots level to provide transformative global health education experiences and community empowerment in underserved communities around the world. CFHI offers 30+ Global Health Education Programs designed to broaden students' perspectives about global health - as well as a variety of community health initiatives and projects - in developing countries including Bolivia, Ecuador, India, Argentina, Mexico, Uganda, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, and the Philippines. More than 8,000 students have participated in CFHI programs to date. CFHI has been granted Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).

About The Consortium of Universities for Global Health

The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) was founded by in 2008 by leading North American university global health programs, with funding from the Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. It works:

●         across research, education, advocacy and service to improve health outcomes, particularly for the world’s poor
●          to aggregate required curricula and define competencies for global health
●          to define criteria and conditions for student and faculty field placements in host institutions
●          to foster collaborations between institutions in resource-rich nations and those in less-developed nations to address global health challenges

CUGH, and its 145+ member institutions, is dedicated to fostering equitable partnerships between institutions in high and middle-low income countries. This includes encouraging that all partners are involved in the planning, implementation, management and impact evaluation of joint projects.

Source: Child Family Health International

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