By placing physicians in the developing world, we hope to instill a sense of global citizenry...
The Yale University International Health Program was founded in 1981 by Drs. Michele Barry and Frank Bia to inspire a more global vision of health care in a traditional internal medicine residency program. By placing physicians trained in the US face-to-face with the broad range of health care needs in the developing world, the Yale International Health Program (IHP) hoped to instill a sense of global citizenry and create local and international community activists in health.
The Yale/Stanford Global Health Scholars Program was conceived in 2001 with the goals of expanding the existing Yale IHP to physicians in residency training from leading U.S. hospitals and universities, and offering overseas opportunities to more experienced career physicians. The program selected the most promising residents and career physicians, primarily from Yale and Stanford, to rotate to one of our carefully selected sites overseas. The program now incorporates building educational capacity with these partners.
In addition, this program maintains a strong alumni network to promote future partnerships between host countries, universities, and physician scholars in international health.
During the past 40 years, over 1,500 medical residents and career physicians have participated in this unique program by working and teaching in underserved areas throughout the world. These rotations offer unusual opportunities for residents to enrich their knowledge and practice of medicine in settings with few resources. A study of Yale graduates of this program confirmed that IHP physicians were more likely than their counterparts to demonstrate social concern within their clinical practices as measured by their commitment to serve poor and immigrant populations.