Developing Ethical and Sustainable Global Health Educational Exchanges for Clinical Trainees: Implementation and Lessons Learned from the 30-Year Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) Partnership.

Matthew Turissini,Tim Mercer,Paul Ayuo,Lukoye Atwoli,Robert Einterz,Adrian Gardner,Jenny Baenziger,Debra Litzelman

doi:10.5334/aogh.2782

Abstract

Background:There is strong interest among healthcare trainees and academic institutions in global health rotations. There are a number of guidelines detailing the ethical principles for equitable and ethical global health rotations and bilateral exchanges, but it is often challenging to know to implement those principles and develop longstanding partnerships.Objectives:The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) is a 30-year continuous partnership between a consortium of 12 universities in North America and Moi University in Kenya. The AMPATH bilateral educational exchange has had 1,871 North American and over 400 Kenyan clinical trainees participate to date. The article describes the bilateral exchange of trainees including curriculum, housing, and costs and discusses how each is an application of the principles of ethical global engagement.Findings:The article takes the experiences of the AMPATH partnership and offers practical strategies for implementing similar partnerships based on previously published ethical principles.Conclusions:AMPATH provides a model for developing an institutional partnership for a bilateral educational exchange grounded in cultural humility, bidirectional relationships, and longitudinal, sustainable engagement.

Highlights

BackgroundThere is strong interest among healthcare trainees and academic institutions in global health rotations
Short Term Experiences in Global Health (STEGHs) are a popular and well-acknowledged valuable component of medical education
We describe how Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH)’s bilateral educational exchange of medical and pharmacy trainees has applied the ethical principles, well summarized by Melby et al, for equitable and ethical global health educational partnerships and highlight some lessons learned (Figure 1)

Summary

Background

There is strong interest among healthcare trainees and academic institutions in global health rotations. There are a number of guidelines detailing the ethical principles for equitable and ethical global health rotations and bilateral exchanges, but it is often challenging to know to implement those principles and develop longstanding partnerships. Objectives: The Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare (AMPATH) is a 30-year continuous partnership between a consortium of 12 universities in North America and Moi University in Kenya. The article describes the bilateral exchange of trainees including curriculum, housing, and costs and discusses how each is an application of the principles of ethical global engagement. Conclusions: AMPATH provides a model for developing an institutional partnership for a bilateral educational exchange grounded in cultural humility, bidirectional relationships, and longitudinal, sustainable engagement

Introduction

Findings

Conclusion