Nina Gumkowski, GHLI staff
This July, 90 young adults began their work as Global Health Corps (GHC) fellows fellows with two weeks of training at Yale where they attended sessions to build “professional and intellectual development in the training’s leadership framework.” Fellows prepared for their year-long placements around the globe, in Burundi, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, the U.S. and Zambia, where they will assist in programs that focus on an array of health care issues. During the two week program, fellows listened to presentations and participated in discussions examining different viewpoints on a variety of issues, including the AIDS epidemic.
AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves discussed how grass roots campaigns in the 80s and 90s were fundamental to getting the government to address the effect of AIDS in the United States. He stressed the importance of community activism and that small voices in a group can make a lot of noise. Next, Ambassador Mark Dybul, who led PEPFAR under President George W. Bush, presented the fellows with a case study based on the events that occurred right before President Bush announced PEPFAR at the state of the union and asked the fellows “What would you have done?” This approach led to a vibrant discussion in which the fellows spoke about all the details involved in influencing policy.
This is the second year that the training was held at Yale. GHC has an educational partnership with GHLI to support the fellowship training. Mike Skonieczny, executive director of GHLI, welcomed the fellows and emphasized the progress being made to internationalize Yale -- in the past four years global health concentrations and certificates have become part of the Yale School of Public Health, the Yale School of Medicine, and the Yale University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. “The work that GHC is doing felt in sync with the mantra of Yale, to groom future leaders,” said Mike when asked about GHC. “We hope that there will be possibilities to expand this partnership in the future.”
UPDATE:
During the GHC training at Yale co-founder, Barbara Bush was interviewed by iVillage about the work being done by the fellows and some future plans for Global Health Corps.