Global Health

Global  Health students foster the vision that the world is a global community striving for improved health and access to care for all of its members. They seek opportunities in underserved areas local and abroad. Click here to learn more.

 

Global Health Track

The Global Health Track fosters the assumption that the world is a global community striving for improved health care for all its members. The track supports a sense of connectedness that is built upon the similarities that countries share in the area of health care needs and challenges. The students gain outreach skills in their early years of training and a cohort of the students are selected to travel abroad to utilize those skills.

Year 1

  • Physician, Patient and Public Health
  • Global & Community Health Monthly Meetings
  • International Service Learning

Year 2

  • Physician, Patient and Public Health
  • Global & Community Health Monthly Meetings
  • One Health
  • Capstone Project

Year 3 & 4 Optional

  • “Optional” International Rotation Elective

Student Experiences

Rishi Thomas

This program is relatively new and both this and all of the other Longitudinal Track programs we have here are great. They help students not only get a chance to interact with other students who are like minded but it helps broaden their perspective. I mean we all come from different walks of life and just interacting with each other has already changed us but also learning more and having someone you can go to like if I have any questions I can always just run to Dr. Othman and she’s always willing to help us. It’s just really just gives you that sense of a community within a community and it’s really nice.

David Ward

This program has changed my medical education that you get to jump to clinical stuff when you’re talking with clinicians who have gone out and done the work internationally. That’s been a fun thing you know when you’re stuck in the ruts of little microbiology things. It’s nice to actually think about patients again.

Kathy Nguyen

I’m going to Thailand and we’re going to be helping out people is a very rural area, they’re tribal people and they definitely don’t have the access that we have here, nor even locals of that area just because they’re considered minorities and pretty discriminated against. So we’ll be hiking 15-18 miles into their village to try and provide care for them. I think that’s a big part of making you a competent physician. You don’t necessarily need to do this constantly, but I think doing something out of your comfort zone gives you that perspective on how to care for a person that is different from you and everyone essentially is different from you here or abroad. Going somewhere so far, seeing something so drastic really kind of puts you in the place of well I’m just a small part of something bigger. So I think that helps you to be sensitive, be compassionate all of those characteristics that make up a great physician.

Navid Noori

I first heard about the track when I was applying to WesternU in 2015. I was looking on the website for things that interest me and as soon as I saw that it really helped my decision to come here. Part of the reason why I wanted to go into Global health Track is also part of the reason why I wanted to do either international business or law, was to connect countries through means and after deciding not to go into business or law I thought the next best way to do that was through medical care. If a natural disaster breaks out of if there’s a disease outbreak of some kind countries have to talk to each other and share resources and one of the best ways to do that is through medical care through doctors. Especially doctors who are culturally knowledgeable of different regions. They can kind of go in and out between their own country and another country.

GHT Student

NEED INFO: The program has affected my medical education by just providing me a sense of what’s going on in the world today in regards to health. It’s a good way of breaking out of just medical school itself in learning what people are doing outside and figuring out what programs are working to better the health of others in other communities and that’s something I hope to do in the future too.

Sherman Chu

The program has affected my medical education by just providing me a sense of what’s going on in the world today in regards to health. It’s a good way of breaking out of just medical school itself in learning what people are doing outside and figuring out what programs are working to better the health of others in other communities and that’s something I hope to do in the future too.

Global Health Track Directors

Maryam Othman, MD, MPH

Maryam Othman, MD, MPH

Director, Division of Global and Community Health Assistant Professor, Dept of Social Medicine and Healthcare Leadership COMP-Pomona

Jeannie Davis, EdD

Jeannie Davis, EdD

Assistant Professor of Population Health Science, COMP-Northwest