Curriculum mapping as a tool to facilitate curriculum development: a new School of Medicine experience.

BACKGROUND: Every curriculum needs to be reviewed, implemented and evaluated; it must also comply with the regulatory standards. This report demonstrates the value of curriculum mapping (CM), which shows the spatial relationships of a curriculum, in developing and managing an integrated medical curriculum. METHODS: A new medical school developed a clinical presentation driven integrated curriculum that incorporates the active-learning pedagogical practices of many educational institutions worldwide while adhering to the mandated requirements of the accreditation bodies. A centralized CM process was run in parallel as the curriculum was being developed. A searchable database, created after the CM data was uploaded into an electronic curriculum management system, was used to ensure placing, integrating, evaluating and revising the curricular content appropriately. RESULTS: CM facilitated in a) appraising the content integration, b) identifying gaps and redundancies, c) linking learning outcomes across all educational levels (i.e. session to course to program), c) organizing the teaching schedules, instruction methods, and assessment tools and d) documenting compliance with accreditation standards. CONCLUSIONS: CM is an essential tool to develop, review, improve and refine any integrated curriculum however complex. Our experience, with appropriate modifications, should help other medical schools efficiently manage their curricula and fulfill the accreditation requirements at the same time.

Identifying interprofessional global health competencies for 21st-century health professionals.

BACKGROUND: At the 2008 inaugural meeting of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH), participants discussed the rapid expansion of global health programs and the lack of standardized competencies and curricula to guide these programs. In 2013, CUGH appointed a Global Health Competency Subcommittee and charged this subcommittee with identifying broad global health core competencies applicable across disciplines. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this paper is to describe the Subcommittee's work and proposed list of interprofessional global health competencies. METHODS: After agreeing on a definition of global health to guide the Subcommittee's work, members conducted an extensive literature review to identify existing competencies in all fields relevant to global health. Subcommittee members initially identified 82 competencies in 12 separate domains, and proposed four different competency levels. The proposed competencies and domains were discussed during multiple conference calls, and subcommittee members voted to determine the final competencies to be included in two of the four proposed competency levels (global citizen and basic operational level - program oriented). FINDINGS: The final proposed list included a total of 13 competencies across 8 domains for the Global Citizen Level and 39 competencies across 11 domains for the Basic Operational Program-Oriented Level. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need for continued debate and dialog to validate the proposed set of competencies, and a need for further research to identify best strategies for incorporating these competencies into global health educational programs. Future research should focus on implementation and evaluation of these competencies across a range of educational programs, and further delineating the competencies needed across all four proposed competency levels.

Identifying global health competencies to prepare 21st century global health professionals: report from the global health competency subcommittee of the consortium of universities for global health.

As universities increase their focus on global health-related professional education, the need for specific competencies and outcomes to guide curriculum development is urgent. To address this need, the chair of the Education Committee of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) appointed a Subcommittee to determine if there is a need for broad global health core competencies applicable across disciplines, and if so, what those competencies should be. Based on that work, this paper (a) discusses the benefits of developing interprofessional and discipline-specific global health competencies; (b) highlights themes that emerged from a preliminary review of existing related literature; and (c) reviews the process used to identify two levels of interprofessional global health competencies.

Editorial: Transforming global health, global health education, infectious disease, and chronic conditions in the 21st century.

Chronic and infectious diseases, including health care-associated infections and tropical diseases, represent a large portion of the global health burden. Solutions need to be found while addressing other health priorities identified by the Millennium Development Goals. A number of organizations and initiatives have been created to meet this need. Developing countries in Latin America and several African countries are taking a larger role in the development of robust health systems, capacity building, and education. Integrated, efficient, and equitable health systems that incorporate primary, secondary, and tertiary care models with a research focus are critically needed to fill this void.

Global health: evolving meanings.

Approaches to health, health care, and the terminology to describe global health have evolved over the past 70 years since the introduction of the Constitution of the World Health Organization and definition of health in broader terms. The early focus on individual care gradually shifted to community, population, and global approaches, with associated changes in the site of medical care, the personnel who provide it, and the education and training of those personnel. Concomitantly, goals changed from purely curative care to disease prevention and health promotion. Health was better understood to exist within the larger political, social, cultural, and ethical settings.

Global health and the role of universities in the twenty-first century.

A vast gap exists between knowledge, generation of knowledge, and the application of knowledge to the needs and benefit of the global population. In middle-income and lower-income countries, universities are becoming more engaged with the communities in which they are located to try to solve the difficult problems of poverty and poor health. Global collaborations and reform of medical education in the twenty-first century will help move universities out of cloistered academic settings and into the community to bring the changes needed to equitably meet the health needs of all.

Global health education consortium: 20 years of leadership in global health and global health education.

The Global Health Education Consortium (GHEC) is a group of universities and institutions committed to improving the health and human rights of underserved populations worldwide through improved education and training of the global health workforce. In the early 1990s, GHEC brought together many of the global health programs in North America to improve competencies and curricula in global health as well as to involve member institutions in health policy, development issues, and delivery of care in the inner cities, marginalized areas, and abroad.