Global Health Certificate Program - Vanderbilt University School of Nursing

My name is Morgan DeKlein and I am a student here at Vanderbilt studying to be a nurse midwife and family nurse practitioner. And I am also completing a graduate certificate in global health, which is offered through the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health. And this is a unique opportunity for nursing students to learn more about global health issues that are currently impacting the world today, such as HIV AIDS, malaria, maternal and newborn health, malnutrition, sanitation, and then also how we as health care providers can work together to address these issues and help to reduce these disparities. The graduate certificate in global health requires that you complete six additional credits outside of your nursing classes and also complete a practicum experience. And the global health classes are actually offered free to nursing students, so that is definitely a perk. And the way the program works is that you take one three credit class and you have two to choose from for this. One is foundations in global health and the other is foundational skills in global health. So foundations in global health covers an overview of global health issues and explores the multifaceted dimensions of these issues since global health topics are often very complex. And then foundational skills in global health looks at the practical skills you need to carry out research or carry out a global health program. And so this course covers how to do a needs assessment on the field, how to collect and analyze data, how to design and manage a global health program, and then how to evaluate its effectiveness. And so after you do this three credit course, you also take three one credit electives and there are several to choose from. You can take leadership development, ethics and global health, medical anthropology, nursing informatics, tropical diseases, politics and policy. So depending on your interests, there are a wide variety to choose from. And then after doing these six additional credits, which is about four classes, you also do a practicum experience. And usually this is about six weeks in length and it can be done in conjunction with your clinicals and you are often working with a multicultural population and doing a research component along with your practicum experience with this population. So I'll give you an example of a recent project that was done. There was a midwifery student who looked at centering pregnancy, which is a model for group prenatal care. And she looked at how this model could be used with an Arabic speaking population and how this model was received within that culture. So that's just one example of a project you could do. I will say that if you are interested in pursuing the graduate certificate in global health, it is important to work closely with your advisor on this. The nursing schedule here at Vanderbilt is a very full one. So if you want to pursue the certificate, it's important just to plan out your course of study to make sure you're able to fulfill all the requirements. Pursuing a graduate certificate in global health has certainly helped to renew my interest in international health challenges and also has helped me become more aware of the magnitude of these challenges and how important it is for healthcare providers to work together and collaborate with those from other fields of study as well in order to address these issues and work to reduce these disparities. For me personally, I hope to work in a developing country someday, helping to train midwives and helping to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality rates. I think that whether you envision yourself working in an international setting or working here in the U.S., that this program would be very beneficial to you. There are certainly a lot of opportunities to serve in the U.S. as well, whether you are working in an urban area and caring for a multicultural population where there are a lot of immigrants and refugees, or whether you envision yourself working in a more rural area and perhaps near one of the Native American reservations. I think that this program will equip you with the skills necessary to be an effective leader in a cross-cultural setting and will also help prepare you to carry out research or create an interdisciplinary approach for designing and managing a program in your community that helps to reduce health disparities. Besides the Graduate Certificate in Global Health, there are a number of other opportunities here at Vanderbilt to pursue your interest in global health. One way is through a monthly club where students and faculty get together to discuss journal articles that have recently been published about global health and we usually meet over lunch and often have a lively discussion about these issues. One issue we discussed recently was how global climate change is affecting global health issues, particularly in relation to maternal and newborn health. We have also discussed how short-term medical mission trips can be helpful or hurtful to communities depending on how they are carried out and whether there is the potential for a long-term sustainable partnership between your team and between the community. There is also a Nursing Leadership and Global Health Symposium that meets here in Nashville each spring and this is a great opportunity to hear from dynamic speakers who are experts in the field of global health and who come from all over the world to share about their experiences here in Nashville. And there is also a Global Health Case Competition and this is where a group of four to six students from nursing and from other disciplines as well get together and form a team and work to create an innovative solution to a global health challenge and they have about two and a half days to prepare their case and then they compete against other teams and this is a great opportunity to have fun and learn more about global health as well as the opportunity to compete for prizes. There is a large cash prize if you do well in this competition. There are sometimes opportunities to do clinical rotations overseas depending on the year. The Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health does have partnerships in Kenya, Nicaragua, Guatemala and a few other places so sometimes there is an opportunity for that. There are also a lot of opportunities to volunteer right here in Nashville with a multicultural population. One example is the Salone Family Health Center. This is a health center that offers care to immigrants and refugees who otherwise would not have access to these services and they are very welcoming of nursing students even if you can only give two to three hours of your time each week they love to have volunteers. So if you are interested in pursuing global health there are definitely a lot of different avenues here at Vanderbilt for developing that interest.