Teaching Corner: An Undergraduate Medical Education Program Comprehensively Integrating Global Health and Global Health Ethics as Core Curricula

Abstract

The Medical School for International Health (MSIH) was created in 1996 by the Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in affiliation with Columbia University’s Health Sciences division. It is accredited by the New York State Board of Education. Students complete the first three years of the program on the Ben-Gurion University campus in Be’er-Sheva, Israel, while fourth-year electives are completed mainly in the United States (at Columbia University Medical Center and affiliates as well as other institutions) along with a two-month global health elective at one of numerous sites located around the world (including Canada, Ethiopia, India, Israel, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Uganda, the United States, and Vietnam). The unique four-year, American-style curriculum is designed not only to prepare physicians who will be able to work at both an individual and community level but also at both of these levels anywhere in the world. In this way, it combines elements of medical and public health curricula not limited to an American perspective.