Virtual Global & Public Health Internship - Ecuador

I never thought virtual experience can be this enriching until I participated in the internship program by CFHI. They made sure to make this virtual space the most engaging and interacting one. Everything starting from the correspondence, timely response and process of selection is highly appreciable. The program, discussions and content gave me Public and Global Health perspectives from a lens I had never imagined. This experience had definitely added value to my professional and academic journey by allowing me to explore different health care systems in an innovative manner. I had the opportunity to: Virtually engage with different countries and health care systems added value to my existing knowledge and experience, Self paced learning and activities provided the time of self reflection and evaluation and helped me design my own pathway towards work in domain of public and global health issues, and More time to interact with fellows and colleagues from different demographic regions created opportunities for more networking and socializing.

As a medical student, I had an amazing experience with CFHI. I had thoroughly researched global learning experiences prior to choosing CFHI, as I wanted a program that was committed to doing global health work and teaching students in a sustainable and culturally-appropriate way. I felt like CFHI truly prioritized the wellness of the local communities they were in and were very cognizant to avoid the common pitfalls of volontourism, lack of sustainability, and the white savior complex. I couldn't have been more right. From the start, the CFHI staff were kind, responsive, and cared about my personal needs as a program participant. They helped me identify a scholarship (the AMSA Global Health Scholarship) that helped fund my entire global experience. While I originally planned to participate in the on-site Global Health and Intensive Spanish Program in Quito, Ecuador, the program was unfortunately cancelled last minute due to unforseen political circumstances. Even though the situation evolved rapidly only days before we were set to leave for Quito, I could tell how much the CFHI team cared about prioritizing the well-being of the local community and not placing extra burden on that community with our visit, as well as protecting student safety. The team was communicative and quick in these stressful circumstances, and I ended up switching my scholarship to the Virtual version of this program. My virtual experience was nothing short of incredible. While I was doubtful that it could fulfill the my expectations in the same way that an on-site program would, CFHI did an incredible job of choosing local experts to speak to us on global health issues and medical ethics. We were assigned a local Spanish teacher from Quito. I had minimal Spanish knowledge before - after 6 weeks of this course, I feel like participating in this program has vastly accelerated my learning in a way that would have taken months or years during a normal academic year. Participating in this experience has helped me take the first steps in becoming a more culturally-competent physician. I also plan to continue learning Spanish, with the goal of hopefully helping Spanish-speaking patients feel more comfortable if I am their provider. I could not thank CFHI enough and would highly recommend this program to anyone in the medical field or not.

The Spanish classes, The thursday sessions, The Global round table discussions where I learned about the challenges of different countries, the global health impact and how each handled it in comparison to the US. I would definitely recommend the program.