global
UGHE students using their new POCUS skills at the "SonoGames"
Alaska
South Dakota
WHAT FELLOWS SAY
"I spent the second year of my fellowship in Lima, Peru, working on a research project focused on neonatal sepsis. I was also able to attend lectures and round with the medical school, do some clinical work in a remote village, and take Spanish language classes. I had a wonderful year there!
Since completing the fellowship, I have been working as a Med-Peds Hospitalist at Alaska Native Medical Center. I was honored to be able to return here after fellowship. I also do some intermittent rural hospitalist work in Bethel, AK. My focus has been clinical, but starting in summer of 2023, I will be taking over as the Alaska/ANTHC Site Coordinator for the fellowship! I am really excited to be involved in the fellowship again, and I hope to facilitate positive clinical experiences for the fellows and support them in their goals." - Dr. Linnea Smith, Class of 2019
"My husband and I chose to do the UW Global and Rural Health Fellowship after residency because we had long been interested in global health and had various experiences throughout medical school and residency, but we did not know what we wanted our career to look like right after we graduated. We had discussions about academic medicine or Indian Health Service (IHS) or trying to create a unique position that would allow us half time abroad and half time here. We wanted to work in places and with organizations that we could see ourselves in for a long time. And what we really desired was being afforded some more time and mentorship to find the right fit.
During the fellowship we started with a year at Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC), which we both loved. We were working with an incredible patient population in a unique and impressive healthcare system, and we were surrounded by thoughtful, like-minded colleagues, some of whom came from the same fellowship, others who had been at ANMC for a long time and had unique perspectives from our own. For our 2nd year, we chose to go to Rwanda with different but similar organizations and roles that impressively fit our own interests. For me, I had always been interested in Planetary Health and One Health, but had found it challenging to get involved as a medical doctor, other than in research, which I was less interested in. I had also enjoyed medical education but had not sought out a lot of extra training in this in residency. I ended up working at University of Global Health Equity (UGHE), initially to develop an integrated curriculum on One Health for the MBBS students but ended up being present for their very first clinical clerkships and became integral to the internal medicine clerkship leadership. I got a ton of experience in medical education and also used my fellowship education allowance to do a short course through Harvard on medical education.
Halfway through our 2nd year we realized that we loved both of these jobs and organizations and worked with both to create a career where we worked half time each in Alaska and Rwanda. Most likely, the only reason that we were able to get this amount of flexibility is because we had worked in both places first and demonstrated how this model had the chance to work for all of us.
A global health fellowship is not for everyone, but we tried to be very clear in what our goals were. We had a lot of support from the fellowship leadership and flexibility within the program to find a good match for our year abroad and this ended up working out just as we had hoped. We would not be where we are now, 3 years after graduating, without it." - Dr. Kelsey Ripp, Class of 2022