Building Blocks of Global Health Mentorship: Motivation, Expectations, and Institutional Support.

BACKGROUND: Global health education and training experiences are in high demand. Mentorship plays an important role in successful training, but academic institutions often lack formalized mentorship support. This study aimed to evaluate perceptions of global health mentorship across disciplines at Johns Hopkins University and to understand how to better support faculty mentorship for global health training. METHODS: This is a retrospective study that used qualitative methods to assess the perceptions of students who participated in the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health (CGH) field placement program from 2011-2013 and CGH faculty who may have served as their mentors. Qualitative data was gathered through 30 individual in-depth interviews and 4 focus groups capturing both faculty and student perspectives. Data were analyzed inductively until thematic saturation was reached; a theoretical model, which we call the "building blocks of global health mentorship" model, emerged to serve as an analytical and synthesizing framework. FINDINGS: A series of factors influenced global health mentorship from an individual to institutional level, including motivation, expectation alignment, finances, time, and knowledge. Both students and faculty reported the importance of motivation and aligned expectations to the mentorship experience and, more broadly, the overseas experience. Mentorship relationships were identified by students and faculty as either a catalyst or a hindrance to the training experience from both a personal and a professional point of view. Many faculty mentioned insufficient institutional support and financial resources, which negatively influenced their capacity to serve as mentors. CONCLUSIONS: Many factors, ranging from individual to institutional, influence mentorship for both faculty and students, which in turn influence international experiences. The underlying role of institutional support emerged as a highly salient influencing factor. Global health programs should harness the faculty and students' motivations and expectations, as well as provide better support to faculty serving as mentors.

"The era of single disease cowboys is out": evaluating the experiences of students, faculty, and collaborators in an interdisciplinary global health training program.

BACKGROUND: Global Health is an inherently interdisciplinary field but overseas training in global health, particularly among health science institutions, has been an 'individual' or 'individual discipline' experience. Team-based training is an approach to global health education which is increasing in popularity; research on team-training demonstrates that teams are more productive than individuals. In 2015, the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health (CGH) developed the Global Established Multidisciplinary Sites (GEMS) program, an interdisciplinary training program which was designed to establish a new norm in global health training by bringing interdisciplinary teams of faculty and students together to identify and solve complex global health challenges. This research aims to evaluate the program's first year and contribute to the literature on interdisciplinary team training. We conducted 22 in-depth interviews with students, faculty, and local collaborators from 3 GEMS project sites. Findings were analyzed for themes through a framework approach. RESULTS: The program exposed students, faculty, and collaborators to a wide range of disciplines in global health. Students' desire to learn how other disciplines contribute to global health solutions was an important motivator for joining GEMS; many participants including faculty and collaborators valued exposure to multiple disciplines. Mentorship and communication were a challenge across all teams in part due to members having distinct "disciplinary languages". Balancing disciplinary representation on teams and establishing work plans were also key challenges. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the data the CGH provides four recommendations for institutions developing global health interdisciplinary teams to optimize team functioning and address challenges in mentorship, language, and roles: 1) address interdisciplinary communication early, 2) develop work plans during group formation, 3) meet as a team prior to travel, and 4) establish regular check ins. This article provides first-hand reflections on interdisciplinary team experiences in a global context and provides a pathway for the development of innovative strategies in global health training.

Evaluation and Support Mechanisms of an Emerging University-wide Global Health Training Program.

BACKGROUND: Global health education is in high demand in the United States, across the continuum of learning, and field experiences are an essential part of this education. However, evaluations of these programs are limited. OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to evaluate a field placement program at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, to understand how to better support student training overseas and faculty mentorship. METHODS: We used qualitative and quantitative methods to gather data from program reporting requirements (152 student surveys and 46 experiential narrative essays), followed by 17 semistructured interviews, and 2 focus groups. Data were analyzed through manual coding and a socioecological model served as an analytical and a synthesizing framework. FINDINGS: A series of factors influence the participants' experience in overseas placements spanning across 4 aggregate levels, from individual to societal, including opportunity for professional advancement, independence, loneliness and illness, mentorship quality, funding, institutional partnership building, opportunity for public health contribution, and for development of cultural competency. Faculty and students thought that the program was beneficial to the learning experience, particularly for its contribution to experiential knowledge of a low- and middle-income country setting and for developing cross-cultural relationships. Communication and scope of work were 2 areas in which students and faculty members often had different expectations and many students emerged having cultivated different skills than they or their mentor initially expected. Students found the experience useful for both their academic and professional careers and faculty members saw mentorship, one of their professional responsibilities, emerge. CONCLUSIONS: Many socioecological factors influence an overseas field experience, which in turn produces important effects on students' career choices, and faculty members appreciate the opportunity to serve as mentors. The most vital support mechanisms suggested for faculty and students included available funding, clear preparation, and communication facilitation across the experiential continuum.

Effect of population size and unbalanced data sets on QTL detection using genome-wide association mapping in barley breeding germplasm.

Over the past two decades many quantitative trait loci (QTL) have been detected; however, very few have been incorporated into breeding programs. The recent development of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in plants provides the opportunity to detect QTL in germplasm collections such as unstructured populations from breeding programs. The overall goal of the barley Coordinated Agricultural Project was to conduct GWAS with the intent to couple QTL detection and breeding. The basic idea is that breeding programs generate a vast amount of phenotypic data and combined with cheap genotyping it should be possible to use GWAS to detect QTL that would be immediately accessible and used by breeding programs. There are several constraints to using breeding program-derived phenotype data for conducting GWAS namely: limited population size and unbalanced data sets. We chose the highly heritable trait heading date to study these two variables. We examined 766 spring barley breeding lines (panel #1) grown in balanced trials and a subset of 384 spring barley breeding lines (panel #2) grown in balanced and unbalanced trials. In panel #1, we detected three major QTL for heading date that have been detected in previous bi-parental mapping studies. Simulation studies showed that population sizes greater than 384 individuals are required to consistently detect QTL. We also showed that unbalanced data sets from panel #2 can be used to detect the three major QTL. However, unbalanced data sets resulted in an increase in the false-positive rate. Interestingly, one-step analysis performed better than two-step analysis in reducing the false-positive rate. The results of this work show that it is possible to use phenotypic data from breeding programs to detect QTL, but that careful consideration of population size and experimental design are required.