Global Health and Underserved Populations Track

The Global Health and Underserved Populations Track (GH Track) is a unique program established in 2008 by Dr. Thuy Bui designed to train physician leaders in clinical medicine, education, health policy, and research in global health. At its foundation is a core internal medicine competency with a strong generalist perspective, cost-conscious practice, and back-to-basics diagnosis. Clinical training provides exposure to local and international sites, coupled with a curriculum and scholarly work designed to address health policy, public health, and social factors influencing health and disease in the global context.

• • The Department of Medicine offers up to 4 positions in GH track each year.
  • For additional information please contact Dr. Thuy Bui.
  • To see next steps for our graduates, please click here.

Components of the training program include the following:

Clinical experiences with underserved populations in the US:

• • Chinle Comprehensive Health Care Facility, Arizona (Indian Health Service)
  • The Birmingham Free Clinic and Other Health Care for the Homeless Clinics in Pittsburgh
  • Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Montana
  • Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation, Arizona

4 months of clinical training experiences at an International clinical training experiences  (1-2 months in PGY2 and PGY3 years)

• • Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi (Africa)
  • Georgetown Public Hospital, Georgetown, Guyana
  • Philippine General Hospital, Manila, Philippines

Mentorship

Each resident in this track is assigned a mentor who is a faculty member from the University of Pittsburgh and the Center for Global Health and has ongoing activities in the resident’s country of interest. One of the Global Health Track’s key faculty members will serve as the resident’s program and career mentor to ensure that each resident achieves all the goals of the residency track and receives the appropriate guidance and resources to pursue additional training or a position after residency. Residents who are interested in pursuing health services research in Pittsburgh with potential global health implications will be matched with funded researchers in the Division of General Internal Medicine.

Global Health Preparatory Seminar

A month-long global health preparatory seminar is offered for global health residents and interested categorical residents. This seminar covers public policy, health systems, financing, human rights/ethics, and clinical skills relevant to resource-poor settings (parasitology, procedural skills, portable ultrasound, etc.). Guest lecturers and faculty discussants are from the Graduate School of Public Health, the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and other institutes and disciplines. For more information on our seminar and examples of work being done by Global Health Track residents, please click on below:

• • Bedside Ultrasound Care
  • Certificate in Parasitology and Tropical Medicine
  • Global health syllabus (sample from prior year)
  • Health System Assessment Project (sample from prior year)
  • Critically Appraised Topics Project (sample from prior year)
  • Global Health IM Residency Track Health Policy Briefs (sample from prior year)

Scholarly Project

An integral component of the Global Health and Underserved Populations Track is a longitudinal project on a relevant global health issue. The project itself can focus on underserved populations in the United States but should have global perspectives based on the international experience. Typically, up to 4 months at an international site is split up between the second and third years of residency. Categories of Scholarly Project include:

• • Systematic description and documentation of a specific health problem
  • Service-based quality improvement study
  • Program development and evaluation
  • Community needs assessment and population surveys
  • Health policy and advocacy paper
  • Humanism in medicine paper with concentration on global and international issues

Pittsburgh’s Ambulatory Curriculum for Trainees in Low-Resource Settings (PACT LRS)

The Pittsburgh’s Ambulatory Curriculum for Trainees in Low Resource Settings (PACT LRS) is an open access, evidence-based, ambulatory care syllabus designed for medical learners caring for people in underserved areas around the world.

This project was initially conceived to focus the professional interest of internal medicine residents within the Global Health and Underserved Populations Track from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) to address the educational priorities of their international partners, the medical students from the Catholic University of Mozambique (UCM for its initials in Portuguese). A needs and opportunity assessment performed at UCM in 2015 revealed that the diagnosis and clinical management of non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) was not greatly emphasized in other portions of the medical school’s curriculum. Therefore, the modules encompass subjects that UPMC residents are quite familiar with, specifically NCDs, and other clinical topics that Mozambican students requested via the aforementioned survey. To enhance the medical knowledge and clinical competencies of other medical trainees in low resource settings, we disseminate these modules free of cost via this online platform.

To access these modules, please click here. 

Global Health Equity Lecture Series

The track lunch is designed to advance core competencies in HIV/AIDS, tropical diseases, public health, policy and advocacy, human rights, bioethics, and health services research. It also serves as a forum for health professionals, residents, and students from medicine and other disciplines to share ideas and opportunities to advance the global health agenda. Residents in their second and third year of residency actively contribute to this conference series by exploring the social, economic, and political issues of country and region of interest through preparatory seminars before departure and through debriefing seminars after the completion of the international experience.

Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) for Developing Countries Project

• • Creating a compendium of answerable clinical questions
  • Disseminating and implementing EBM in a resource-poor setting
  • Embarking on a systematic review with instruction and resources provided through the EBM Resident Journal Club. For more information, click here.