The Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine (KPSOM) announced its inaugural Global Health Guest Student Rotation program. The six-week program launching today will be led by the KPSOM Office of Global Health as a result of the school’s partnership with AMPATH (Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare). AMPATH is a global consortium of universities and medical institutions that facilitates hands-on learning in its partner institutions’ respective medical centers to foster long-term equitable partnerships, improve population health, and reduce health disparities.
KPSOM will host two students from the Moi University School of Medicine based in Kenya. The program’s primary objective is to improve students’ proficiency in the use of interventions and information systems available in high-resource settings. The visiting students will participate in KPSOM’s global health clinical rotation at Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center. They will have the opportunity to focus on clinical and cultural learning while receiving a comparative overview of medical education training systems and will learn more about Kaiser Permanente’s integrated care delivery model, interventions, and programs.
The KPSOM Global Health Program, in partnership with AMPATH, hosted a trip to Eldoret, Kenya for a group of KPSOM students in August 2023. KPSOM students participated in a four-week medical elective rotation at Moi University, which serves the western half of Kenya with a population of 24 million people. KPSOM’s students integrated into an internal medicine-focused rounding team to participate in inpatient rotations alongside a Kenyan multidisciplinary team. As it welcomes the two Moi University students to the Pasadena-Los Angeles area to take part in its first-ever exchange program, KPSOM’s Global Health team is simultaneously preparing for the school’s second annual four-week elective rotation in Eldoret.
“Reciprocity and bilateral involvement are key components of our participation with AMPATH, as well as how we aspire to structure our global health program,” said Jeff Brettler, MD, KPSOM Director of Global Health and Associate Professor of Health Systems Science. “As we have begun sending KPSOM students to our partner site in Eldoret, Kenya at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, in conjunction with the Moi University School of Medicine, we are excited to host students from Moi at Kaiser Permanente. As KPSOM’s first experience hosting international students, we hope it’s the start of a long bidirectional exchange with our global health partners.”
The Moi University student participants will rotate through various clinical services, such as pulmonary and critical care medicine, interventional radiology, transgender care, cardiology, and perioperative medicine, which includes anesthesiology and surgery. Students will also learn about population health, longitudinal care, and Kaiser Permanente’s unique sickle cell medical care program. The students will be housed with a Kenyan American host family who has an extensive history both with Kaiser Permanente and with medical care in Kenya. Moi University’s program is open to fifth-year students (roughly equivalent to a late third-year medical student in the United States) in the top 10 percent of their class. Students applying to the program participated in a lottery in mid-January 2024, and those selected were able to choose where to serve their rotation from among AMPATH’s partner medical schools.
KPSOM has also introduced a student ambassador program to offer peer support, communication, and coordination of off-campus social activities to guest students as well as provide partners for cultural and clinical learning. Student ambassadors will help facilitate discussion on comparative health systems while engaging in a distinctive global health and leadership opportunity.
In addition to support from Dr. Brettler, the KPSOM Global Health team includes Maureen Connelly, MD, MPH, Senior Associate Dean, Office of Academic and Community Affairs; Mudit Mathur, MD, MBA, FAAP, FCCM, CPPS, Faculty, Office of Global Health; Zankyaw “ZK” Oo, Coordinator, Office of Global Health; and Kristopher Pratt, MPH, Coordinator, Office of Community Engagement. Additional guest student support is provided by Jennifer Nguyen, MD, West Los Angeles Site Director and Clinical Director of the Global Health Guest Student Program; Christina Garza-Blanck, MA, IA, Senior Project Manager; Ashley Wade, MS, PMP, Curriculum Coordinator; and Robert Nocon, PhD, Core Faculty, Health Systems Sciences.
