Global Health Training Collaborations: Lessons Learned and Best Practices

Abstract

Interest in global health training experiences among trainees from higher income countries has grown. The Working Group on Ethics Guidelines for Global Health Training (WEIGHT) clarified best practices in 2010 based on expert consensus. These guidelines address both balancing priorities in international partnerships and local sustainability concerns related to short-term experiences. However, the guidelines can be difficult to implement in actual practice. Because our organization predated the availability of these consensus guidelines, we reviewed our current set of practices for hosting service–learning programs at our rural Ugandan clinic for adherence to the WEIGHT guidelines. The discrete activities and standardized processes developed over 10 years of hosting experiences were grouped into broader hosting categories, with consensus among the hosting and sending volunteer coordinators of our non-governmental organization partnership. These practices were then mapped to the WEIGHT guidelines. We found our implementation strategies map these guidelines into a clear checklist of actions that can be used by coordinators involved in global health training programs. We include some of the historical reasons that led to our current processes, which may help other partnerships identify similar practice gaps. We anticipate that this action-oriented checklist with historical context will help accomplish the difficult implementation of best practices in global health training collaborations.

Developing a global medicine student pre- and post-travel curriculum

“…Though the global health field recognizes that pre-departure training should be given to all those working in an international capacity, there is generally no accepted way to provide this education. Historically, pre-departure preparation has focused on logistics such as vaccinations, biomedical training, and preventing infections [ 7 – 9 ], though few have developed guidelines on best practices for interactions between institutions and their trainees [ 10 , 11 ]. We conducted a review of the literature relevant to pre-departure training and academic global health medicine programs.…”

Minding the Ps and Qs in global surgery outreach programmes

“…Only then can the priorities in international partnerships and local sustainability concerns can be balanced properly. [22][23][24][25][26] Working in GS adds an extra layer of ethical complexity, which again has been documented in detail and principles and guidelines have been made available. [27][28][29][30][31][32] These include giving precedence to local priorities, optimizing local resources without destabilizing existing programmes, planning for the management of complications and longterm follow-up, tailoring the long-term capacity building to the needs of the local community, compliance with locally applicable laws, applying ethical standards and codes of conduct, cultural sensitivity and respect for all involved, obeying rules of collaborative research and fair authorship, accountability for actions and ensuring the highest standard of clinical care overall.…”

“…Only then can the priorities in international partnerships and local sustainability concerns can be balanced properly. 22–26…”