Havana Medical Education Conference: Viewpoint of a US student
This report by US medical student Joanna Mae Souers offers her perspective on the recent Medical Education Conference in Havana.
November 30th 2008, commenced the 4-day conference, “Medical Education for the 21st Century: Teaching for Health Equity,” at the National Hotel of Cuba. The conference brought together health professionals, educators, administrators and researchers from around the world to exchange the latest in socially “accountable” health education.
The opening night included an inaugural address by Dr. Roberto Gonzalez, the Vice Minister of Public Health in Cuba, and a lecture by Dr. Charles Boelen, an international consultant on health care and ex-coordinator of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Program for Human Resources.
The turnout was impressive with 230 presenters from 29 different countries including Cuba, the Philippines, the United States, Canada, Belgium, Honduras, Chile, Ethiopia, Columbia, Iran, Egypt, Ecuador, Argentina, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Germany, Ecuador, Belgium, Switzerland, Puerto Rico, Hungary, Tanzania, Australia, Pakistan, and New Zealand.
I was amazed that 54 of the 230 presenters came from the United States, representing a plethora of institutions including the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC), UCSF-UC Berkley, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Boston University, The Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity of the Leonard Miller School of Medicine, George Washington University, the University of Wisconsin, and the list goes on.
As representative students of the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM), we were very pleased to be invited as guests of the non-profit organization, MEDICC (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba). MEDICC, one of the many sponsors, has worked closely with Cuba over the years to bring awareness to the international community the highly qualified human resources they have developed to meet the needs of the Cuban people and others around the world.
It was a wonderful opportunity for students to meet and share their experience with health care educators from around the world. Educators were mostly impressed with the student’s humanistic ideals and their well-established set stride ahead of the curve on Social Health Care.
Most of the U.S. students chose the Latin American School of Medicine not only as their first choice, but they chose it as their only choice for the program’s social, humanistic and altruistic ideals embedded in its history and carried out in its curriculum.
As a student of the Latin American School of Medicine, I am proud to represent Cuba’s thought provoking, innovative ways of approaching health education in the 21st Century. It was amazing to see so many people come together to share their ideas and show an interest in our experience. I hope that people will be further inspired to mark their experience with positive thinking and practical change.
Joanna Mae Souers
Escuela LatinoAmericana de Medicina
Carretera Panamericana
KM 3,5
Santa Fe, Playa
Ciudad de la Habana, CUBA
CP 19108
jsouers@gmail.com <mailto:jsouers@gmail.com>
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