Partnerships for Health - Jeff HEALTH and the Rwanda Village Concept Project – A Model of Health Professions Student Global Education

A partnership between the Rwanda Village Concept Project (RVCP), a medical student program in Butare, and Jeff HEALTH (Helping East Africans Link to Health), a multidisciplinary student organization at Thomas Jefferson University, has been working in two Rwandan villages for the past five years. Initially, The Rwanda Health and Healing Project consisted of two programs, a Genocide Survivors Village Transformation and creation of a Genocide Memorial Park. These programs lead to a comprehensive community health assessment, which: 1) documented the needs through key informant interviews and focus groups; 2) identified health resources currently available; and 3) reviewed needs in context of the social and political history of Rwanda. The partnership has grown and taken shape based on this assessment and students' learning experiences. The students have implemented programs in hygiene, malnutrition, HIV education, and malaria prevention. The Rwandan students monitor these programs monthly when the Jeff HEALTH students are stateside. The team partnered with the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of Engineers Without Borders in a latrine construction project. For each of the past 4 years, 3 Rwandan medical students have spent 2 months Jefferson exploring community medicine as a discipline. A formal educational program and peer mentoring prepares Jeff HEALTH students for immersion into Rwandan projects. Based on the success of this model of collaboration and growing faculty and student interest, Jefferson has expanded its Global Health education initiatives to a 4-year longitudinal area of concentration in Population Health for medical students and a Certificate in Global Health in the MPH Program.