Global Health in Pediatric Education: An Implementation Guide for Program Directors

Background: Residents and fellows are increasingly seeking global health (GH) opportunities during their medical training, including stateside GH curriculum and GH electives. Developing an infrastructure to support best practices in GH education can be difficult for busy educators. Objective: Create a comprehensive, practical, freely available resource for incorporating GH education into pediatric training programs. Methods: In 2013, the American Board of Pediatrics (ABP) convened a Global Health Task Force (GHTF) to advise its Board of Directors (BOD) and staff in developing a GH agenda around its core values of training assessment, certification, quality improvement, and continued professional development. Workgroups formed after a stakeholder conference in 2015, co-sponsored by the ABP and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The Trainee Workgroup’s goal was to create “Global Health in Pediatric Education: An Implementation Guide for Program Directors.” The author group was comprised of 15 GH educators from 10 institutions, with administrative support from the ABP Foundation. Writing commenced in September 2016, with an initial draft completed in March 2017. It then underwent extensive reviews by leadership from the following organizations: Association of Pediatric Program Directors (APPD) Global Health Learning Community (April 2017); AAP Section on International Child Health (May 2017); ABPGHTF (June 2017); ABP Education and Training Committee (October 2017 and January 2018); ABP BOD (February 2018); and the ABP Foundation (March 2018). A final review will occur with educators in low-resource settings (May 2018). Results: After completion of reviews and revisions, the free product will be released online in summer 2018. The guide covers the following topics: (1) core considerations for GH training; (2) implementation strategies for GH education; (3) competency-based GH objectives; (4) local/global health; (5) program considerations for GH electives; (6) trainee preparation for GH electives; (7) evaluation, assessment, and certification; (8) GH fellowships; (9) post-graduate GH opportunities; and (10) partnerships and bidirectional exchanges. (Figure 1) There are multiple resource-packed appendices. Dissemination of an initial draft began in March 2018 at the APPD meeting, where it was introduced to approximately 150 educators from 70 institutions. Conclusion: The guide is a product of extensive collaboration with several national stakeholder organizations, and is the first comprehensive set of resources for integrating GH into pediatric education. It is not intended to represent a mandate for programs, but instead to support new and long-standing GH programs. It can be easily tailored to other audiences, and the next phase of the project will be dissemination of the materials to educator communities across specialties. This abstract was submitted on behalf of the American Board of Pediatrics Program Director’s Guide to Global Health Education Author Group