Global Primary Care: Health for All 

Q:  Why global primary care?

A:  Two reasons. First, it’s better primary care. Adapting global lessons to solve local health problems through inclusive empowerment of patients, families, and communities can deliver better health outcomes at lower costs. Second, trainees are demanding it. Integrated training in global health and primary care could attract the best and the brightest students back into primary care, and equip them with skills to empower people and strengthen health systems for vulnerable populations locally and globally.

 Q:  What are the goals of this seminar?

A1:  To engage the Harvard community and the public in an open discussion focused around three key questions:

Why should we integrate global health and primary care training in medical education?

What are the potential benefits of such integrated training pathways on primary care in the U.S. and around the world?

What are the necessary reforms in graduate medical education to advance this vision? What are the most important barriers and challenges?

A2:  To mark the official launch of the MGH Global Primary Care Program.

 Q:  Top three background readings?

A:  No pre-reading required. If interested, these three articles offer a useful overview of primary health care, community-oriented primary care, and future directions for health professional training:

WHO. Primary health care: now more than ever [Synopsis]. World Health Organization: 2008.

Mullan F, Epstein L. Community-oriented primary care: new relevance in a changing world. Am J Public Health. 2002 Nov;92(11):1748-55.

Frenk J, Chen L, Bhutta ZA, Cohen J, Crisp N, Evans T, et al. Health professionals for a new century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in an interdependent world [executive summary]. Lancet. 2010 Dec 4;376(9756):1923-58.

 AGENDA

• 3:00 – 3:10pm:  Welcome and Introductions
•  3:10 – 3:20pm:  Welcome from Co-Sponsors 
•  3:20 – 4:00pm:  Panelist Opening Remarks
•  4:00 – 5:00pm:  Open Discussion / Q&A
•  5:00 – 6:00pm:  Light Refreshments

 

PANELISTS

Judith Bowen, MD, FACP, Professor, Oregon Health and Science University School of Medicine

Dr. Bowen is Professor of Medicine at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) School of Medicine, Portland, Oregon, and Education Consultant for the Office of Academic Affiliations, Veterans Affairs Administration.  A graduate of Williams College and Dartmouth Medical School, she completed categorical internal medicine residency training at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle, Washington.  Dr. Bowen has advanced training in health care ethics and medical education, both from the University of Washington.

Dr. Bowen’s leadership roles in medical education have included chair of the education committee for the Association of Program Directors in Internal Medicine (APDIM) and director of APDIM pre-courses; APDIM Council member; APDIM representative to the national faculty development program for teaching in ambulatory settings; internal medicine residency program director for Virginia Mason Hospital and associate residency program director for primary care internal medicine for Oregon Health & Science University Department of Medicine; elected member and chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges Research in Medical Education (RIME) conference committee; Education Director for the national Academic Chronic Care Collaborative (ACCC) and the California ACCC ; and advisory panel member for the Carnegie Institute for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning ‘Preparation of Physicians’ Professions project. Dr. Bowen now serves as the co-Chair of the Society of General Internal Medicine’s Task Force on the Patient-centered Medical Home (PCMH) and the director of the Society’s PCMH Education Summit (March 2011) that addressed preparation of internal medicine physicians for practicing and leading teams in patient-centered medical home practices.

These roles represent Dr. Bowen’s commitments to developing clinical teachers in their roles as educators and to promote evidence-based transformation of clinical training programs to prepare physicians-in-training for their futures.  She has considerable experience as a translator of educational theory and research into tangible concepts and skills for clinical teachers.

Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, Kolokotrones Professor, Harvard University

Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer is the Kolokotrones University Professor, Harvard University; Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and a founding director of Partners In Health (PIH), an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer’s work focuses on community-based treatment strategies for infectious diseases in resource-poor settings, health and human rights, and the role of social inequalities in determining disease distribution and outcomes. He is Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Boston, and served for ten years as medical director of a charity hospital, L’Hôpital Bon Sauveur, in rural Haiti. Dr. Farmer and his colleagues in the U.S. and abroad have pioneered novel, community-based treatment strategies that demonstrate the delivery of high-quality health care in resource-poor settings. Dr. Farmer is also the UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, under Special Envoy Bill Clinton.

Dr. Farmer has written extensively about health and human rights, and about the role of social inequalities in the distribution and outcome of infectious diseases. His most recent book is Partner to the Poor: A Paul Farmer Reader. Other titles include Pathologies of Power, Infections and Inequalities, The Uses of Haiti, and AIDS and Accusation. In addition, he is co-editor of Women, Poverty, and AIDS, of The Global Impact of Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, and of Global Health in Times of Violence. Dr. Farmer is the recipient of the Carter Award for Humanitarian Contributions to the Health of Humankind from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, the Salk Institute Medal for Health and Humanity, the Duke University Humanitarian Award, the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the American Medical Association’s Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award, the Heinz Award for the Human Condition, the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, and, with his PIH colleagues, the Hilton Humanitarian Prize. In 1993, he was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Award in recognition of his work. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

James O'Connell, MD, Founder and President, Boston Health Care for the Homeless

 Dr. O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1982, and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1985.  In 1985, Dr. O'Connell began fulltime clinical work with homeless individuals as the founding physician of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program.  Dr. O’Connell is now President of the program, which serves over 11,000 homeless persons each year in two hospital-based clinics and over 75 shelters and other outreach sites in Boston.  In 1993, Dr. O’Connell founded BHCHP’s Barbara McInnis House, a 104-bed freestanding medical respite program that provides acute, sub-acute, peri-operative, rehabilitative, recuperative, and palliative end-of-life care for homeless men and women who would otherwise require costly acute care hospitalizations.  Working with the MGH Laboratory of Computer Science, Dr. O’Connell designed and implemented the nation’s first computerized medical record for a homeless program in 1995.  From 1989 until 1996, Dr. O'Connell served as the National Program Director of the Homeless Families Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

Dr. O’Connell is the editor of The Health Care of Homeless Persons: A Manual of Communicable Diseases and Common Problems in Shelters and on the Streets, and an editor of A Practical Approach to Pulmonary Medicine.  His articles have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, and several other medical journals.  He was featured on ABC’s Nightline, and has received numerous awards during his career, including the inaugural Joseph A. Kanter National Award in August 2009 recognizing a physician for “tireless efforts and creativity in developing ways to eliminate health disparities and improve health care for people in the USA.”

Sir Eldryd Parry, MD, Honorary Professor, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George

Eldryd Hugh Owen Parry, currently Honorary Professor, Department of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and past Chairman, THET (Tropical Health and Education Trust), trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge and the University of Wales.  Sir Parry worked, from 1956, in Cardiff, London (National Heart Hospital and Hammersmith Hospital) and between 1960 and 1985 at teaching hospitals in Ibadan, Nigeria; Addis Ababa; Zaria and Ilorin, Nigeria; and Kumasi, Ghana; and subsequently his present posts.  He led a strong department of internal medicine in Zaria and, as foundation dean at Ilorin, developed its revolutionary Community Based Experience and Service (COBES).  Since 1988, when Sir Parry founded THET, he has worked with the Deans of Health Care Training Institutions in tropical Africa to help them strengthen their programmes through staff development and partnerships with their counterparts in the United Kingdom.

 Sir Parry’s research has been in cardiovascular and infectious disease in the tropics, and currently in the decentralised care of chronic disease in rural Ethiopia.  Sir Parry’s awards include Honorary Fellowships at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical  Medicine; Emmanuel College, Cambridge; University of Cardiff; Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons; Borama University, Somaliland; Royal College of Surgeons of England; Royal Society of Tropical Medicine, and also its Centenary Medal for Lifetime Achievement. In 2011 Sir Parry was appointed KCMG, for services to medicine and to health care development in Africa

 

 

For more information, contact MGHGlobalPrimaryCare@partners.org or call (617) 643-0679

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