Students interested in learning about international health care delivery can now receive a Global Health Certificate from the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, according to Associate Director of the Dickey Center Christianne Wohlforth. To complete the certificate, students must enroll in four courses related to global health and complete an extracurricular "capstone project," Wohlforth said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Approximately 12 students have already completed the requisite coursework and have either completed the internship or research component of the certificate or are planning to do so, Wohlforth said.
"I am confident that once it is more broadly known, more students will be interested in it, judging by the global health interest on this campus," she said.
The National Institute of Health's Fogarty International Center requested proposals from colleges and universities for grants that would strengthen course offerings in the field of global health approximately two years ago, according to Wohlforth. A steering committee of faculty from several departments including sociology department chair Denise Anthony and anthropology professor Sienna Craig developed the idea for the certificate program and submitted it as a grant proposal to the Fogarty International Center.
The committee determined that student recipients of the certificate should be aware of how global health problems are "embedded in social, political and economic environments," Wohlforth said.
"They also recognized that if we want to certify students in global health, they have to know some essential things about research," she said. "[The certificate program] includes a very strong ethical component about the ethics of doing research in different parts of the world."
In order to receive the certificate, students must complete the geography course Global Health and Society and the international studies course Essentials of Global Health Research, a new class created using funds from the grant. Students must also take two courses from a pre-selected group of global health-focused classes.
The final stage of the program will require students to study global health outside of the classroom through a related internship or research position, according to Wohlforth. An advisory committee will review capstone project proposals and review petitions for course substitutions, Craig said in an email to The Dartmouth.
Growing student and faculty engagement with the issue of global health influenced the development of the certificate program, according to Craig. "[The certificate program] will help provide students who are interested in global health with a framework and hopefully a set of analytical and practical tools through which they can begin to understand the complexities involved in global health inequities, including issues related to health care delivery and the socioeconomic, historical, biological and even technological challenges involved in addressing these inequities," she said.
With the new certificate, the College aims to establish a greater connection between undergraduate work and Dartmouth Medical School, allowing undergraduates access to additional resources, Wohlforth said.
While the NIH grant will fund some of the global health classes, other new courses will be paid for by the College.
"The experience of the grant has created opportunities for people to think about new curricular offerings, whether they come from the grant or otherwise," Wohlforth said. "It has given us the opportunity to work with faculty in many departments like anthropology and [DMS]."
Students currently enrolled in the anthropology department's global health minor can receive the certificate by completing one of the required certificate courses and a project, according to the Dickey Center's website.
