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Jennifer Goldsmith has twenty-five years of experience transforming global approaches to healthcare. A course she co-taught last fall, Global Health: A Practitioner’s Approach to Real-World Problems, addressed what she finds to be the greatest challenge facing recent grads in the global health sector: the “disconnect between a desire to work in global health in the theoretical sense, and what the job actually looks like.” Goldsmith - who is both the Director of Global Health Equity Administration and Planning at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Managing Director of EqualHealth, Teach - joined forces with Dr. Anatole Manzi, Director of Clinical Practice and Quality Improvement at Partners in Health and a PhD candidate at the University of Rwanda College of Medicine and Health Sciences. Together, they aimed to utilize their extensive knowledge in current healthcare practices to provide students with practical skills for work within the global health industry.
The course sought to “demystify many of the practical and functional aspects of global health assessment and sustenance” through project- and discussion-based learning. Besides simply defining elements of a “practical toolkit in global health,” Goldsmith and Dr. Manzi assigned students to a non-profit organization (NPO), which they followed throughout the semester. By focusing on the metrics of one specific organization, students had the opportunity to use their “toolkit” to actively discover how to implement a theory of change or manage financial matters for a global nonprofit.
At the end of the semester, representatives from the students’ NPOs joined the class for a Q&A session about managing a global non-profit. Goldsmith said that students responded positively to the panelists, providing “smart and insightful” questions about nonprofit work such as how to address an influx of unwanted donated items.
Besides Goldsmith’s administrative experience, Dr. Anatole Manzi provided much needed field experience from his work with PIH-supported countries to develop and implement safety and quality improvement strategies enhancing the integration of quality management into clinical practice. While much of the latter part of the course was dedicated towards film analysis and testing out individual “toolkits,” Dr. Manzi provided necessary insight as someone who has worked directly with many of the issues discussed in class. “When Dr. Manzi talks about these tools, he’s talking about tools that could have helped save people he knows from dying. That’s not something typical of many providers in the U.S.,” Goldsmith commented. “I think it’s philosophically important for white Americans to work with partners who have more lived experience, and especially with people like Dr. Manzi, whose expertise is unparalleled.”
Though the class consisted of little more than half of students majoring in community health, Goldsmith hopes that those in the field were able to use her and Dr. Manzi’s course as a starting block for their future careers. “When our proposal to teach at the ExCollege was initially accepted, we knew that there were students who would want to work in global health, and I felt like there was a need for this class,” Goldsmith reflected. “The global health class in the community health curriculum [at Tufts] was really comprehensive at the macro level, but our class was really practical. By providing students with realistic assignments in addition to authentic skill assessment, students were able to develop very nuanced questions. I got the idea that they were thirsty to explore a more practical skill set, and I hope that there is an opportunity for this course to continue.”
About the Author
Emma Hodgdon is a senior studying English literature. Apart from reading Gothic fiction, she can be found practicing cello for the Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, or dancing with the university’s ballroom dance team. She spends her free time experimenting with calligraphy, learning to speak Chinese, and caring for her succulents, Verotchka and Geraldine.
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