Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

I envision a community of health students focused on working in true, equal partnership with those in need, and I envision the expansion of the global health movement that strives for community-driven, ground-up initiatives to affect positive changes in community health at the local, national, and international level.

GlobeMed as an organization and through our chapters embraces this perspective on grassroots engagement to its chapter members. Through on-site programs, GlobeMed will provide a concrete opportunity for chapter members to experience for themselves the power and efficacy of a true, equal partnership for affecting tangible positive change in community health.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

Many existing organizations for undergraduate students who are looking to enter the health field and wish to "help" focus solely on sending medical supplies or providing a week of "immersion" volunteerism. These organizations present the idea that undergraduate students must either perpetuate unsustainable intervention or focus on their own experience in order to become involved in global health now. These programs devalue the student's potential impact on global health by dismissing the student's ability to work to effect sustainable programming due to the fact that an undergraduate may have to discontinue work after four years of college. Working in this limited context as an undergraduate generates professionals who view global health in an equally limited light, a dangerous view given the desperate need for innovation to create a healthy, sustainable world.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community
• Nationwide community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Create a framework in which chapters can develop partner-specific projects for their on-site visits.
• The framework itself.
• A list of potential project ideas that can serve as jumping-off points for discussion between chapters and partners developing their on-site visits.
• A guide for evaluating the effectiveness of on-site visit projects and their relationship to the ongoing projects of the partnership before and after the on-site visit.
• A document relaying logistic and liability-related concerns relating to on-site visits.
• Goal 2: Build relationships between chapter and partners that will result in an effective, responsible, community-driven partnership for making a sustainable impact on community health.
• A document detailing the relationship between the on-site visit and the strengthening of the partnership.
• Within the evaluation guide, including questions that relate to assessing the partnership before and after the on-site visit.
• Within the framework, emphasizing the qualitative, more ethnograhpically-oriented aspect of the on-site visit--communicating with community members and health workers--as having significance equal to more quantitative, "measurable" outcomes of the visit.
• Within the framework, contextualizing the whole experience in the broader experience of working with global health.
• Goal 3: Develop a context for genuine engagement and awareness of global health challenges and solutions to further the overarching goal of promoting community-driven health work in the next generation of public health workers within our chapter network.
• Within the evaluation guide, including a question of applicability beyond the on-site visit and the partnership itself to the greater global health community.

What is your primary approach? The primary approach is a blend of idea creation, network and alliance building, and leadership and capacity building.

Why did you choose this approach?

The on-site visit program is meant to effect positive change for the chapter, for the partner community, for the partnership, and ultimately for the broader global health community. It is through the fusion of the three aforementioned approaches, rather than through an emphasis on one, that a community-based health approach is furthered and change can be affected in the health of the partner community and ultimately the world.

What will your tactics and activities be?

1) Creating the framework--a description of the purpose of the on-site visit and an outline of the process that chapters will go through during the school year in preparation for their visit from beginning to end.
2) Creating the evaluation guidelines--questions to be answered before, during, and after the on-site visit to establish goals for the trip, provide a space for on-site reflection, and ask for a critical assessment of what was accomplished and the relationship between the visit and ongoing project work afterwards.
3)Create the list of potential projects that could serve as jumping-off points for conversations between partners and chapters.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

By participating in these on-site visits structured around communication and development that is focused on strengthening and furthering the partnership and the projects which the partner deems significant, the students and their partners will be working within the context of true community-driven health work. The lessons learned from this experience will contribute to the significant and developing community-oriented focus of the global health community in which the students and their partners do and will continue to exist.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

1) Organizational skills
2) Communication skills
3) Collaboration and incorporation of network ideas
4) Creating flexible yet effective and sustainable strategies