Public health alumnus launches Emergency Medicine Global Health and Leadership Program
| October 28, 2011 | |
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UNC medical students will have the opportunity to put their emergency training into practice while also helping developing nations improve their own emergency services programs, thanks to a UNC public health alumnus. The new Emergency Medicine Global Health and Leadership Program in the UNC School of Medicine offers fellowships for emergency medicine physicians to work, conduct research and build emergency services capacity in developing countries.
Dr. Ian Martin
“The purpose is to train board-prepared emergency physicians, with strong career interests in advancing the delivery of emergency care in developing countries,” said emergency medicine specialist Ian B. K. Martin, MD, assistant professor of emergency medicine and internal medicine and director of Global Emergency Medicine at UNC’s medical school. “We are teaching these medical students to be leaders in the field through close mentorship, implementation of research and/or education projects and coursework at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.” Martin, who founded the new program, is recruiting physicians who have completed residencies in emergency medicine to become program fellows. In their first year, as junior faculty members in UNC’s Department of Emergency Medicine, they will complete a Master of Public Health degree. Their second year will be spent abroad, implementing an educational or investigative research project in addition to providing clinical care to patients.
Martin works closely with health-care facilities in Tanzania (University of Arusha Medical Center) and in Kenya (Kenyatta National Hospital) to provide his students and resident physicians with clinical experiences abroad and to see how acute care is provided in a resource-limited setting in East Africa.
One challenge U.S.-trained emergency medicine professionals will face as they work in many developing nations is that their specialty is not well understood by the public or even by local health-care professionals, Martin said. For example, while they might understand a specialty such as obstetrics and gynecology, they may know less about emergency medicine as a specialty and the resources necessary to support an effective emergency department in developing countries.
“Our fellows need to be pioneers and trailblazers because they are not only going to be implementing a research or education project, but they also are involved in advancing emergency care in a part of the world where emergency medicine as a specialty has not existed previously,” he explained. That means they will be called upon not just to diagnose a tropical disease or respond to life-threatening wounds, but to help build training infrastructure and emergency services capacity at the local level as well.
Martin, who helped establish a similar program at Duke University, has been at UNC for just over two years.
Although the UNC program is one of about 35 similar programs nationally, it is unique in that it allows fellows the opportunity to complete a Master of Public Health degree with a global health certificate at UNC’s public health school. “The fact that our fellows spend at least seven consecutive months abroad also makes it a fairly unique program,” he said.
“You are really pushed to be creative and resourceful in the developing world,” Martin said. “I think we’re going to have a real impact. We don’t want to just be a clinical program, but we want also to be a program that trains the future leaders in this field.”
Fellowship applications are due Nov. 1 and are open to any physician who has completed an ACGME-accredited residency program in emergency medicine. More information is available on the School of Medicine website.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu. |
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