Impacting local public health practice through the lens of global health

This presentation will discuss a successful strategy for addressing barriers in educating graduate students for work in global health. Many schools of nursing have access to collaborative relationships with sister-schools and international campuses. However, because of the demands of State Boards of Nursing and accreditors and the graduate students' professional and personal commitments, cultural and clinical immersion is often for brief periods and frequently separated from a relevant theory course. Programs that send students to developing countries face challenges: access issues, programmatic challenges, cost, safety issues for students and faculty and significant language and cultural issues. These arrangements work best if there is a known place to live, collaborating academic partners in host countries and an established program of service. The strategy that we will present is the development of an advanced public/community health nursing program that prepared graduates to work globally by engaging them with recent immigrants and refugees in the United States. The initial challenge of this program was creating energy and excitement around learning global health without leaving the community. Because the DC metro area is home to a very diverse community and many international service and aid organizations, students had experiences that approximated international health by working with refugees and newly arrived immigrants in clinics, schools, churches and social groups that welcomed them. They also attended lectures by international health experts and visited the sites of groups who worked with new immigrants and refugees such as PAHO, USAID, the State Department, and Catholic Relief Services.