The Dartmouth Initiative in Global Health and Healthy Development
The Dickey Center for International Understanding is organizing a new initiative
at Dartmouth in global health and healthy development. The Center seeks to
mobilize expertise and commitment in the College and in all of Dartmouth’s
professional schools in order to create and sustain projects that will contribute
to the improvement of global health. Dickey Director Kenneth Yalowitz and
the Global Health Initiative Steering Committee have identified a number of
principles to guide the development and selection of projects:
1. Capitalizing on Dartmouth’s strengths while
addressing local needs: Projects should build on existing expertise
in the various divisions of the College and the graduate schools and on institutional
relationships between Dartmouth and other institutions. Projects may be located
either abroad or in the United States if they relate to a global focus. All
projects must take into account the political and cultural sensitivities surrounding
the particular health issues and remedies they are meant to address.
2. Viability: Projects must be located in areas that have
a basic level of infrastructure and where minimal requirements for personal
security and institutional stability can be assured. Projects should be sustainable
after start-up and have the potential to attract extramural funding. Each
project must have a specific plan, a person in charge, a stable organization
or host in the international venue, and a budget.
3. Portability: Projects should ideally
produce either problem-solving strategies or results that could be applied
in other venues, so that the experience of one project could serve as a model
for future, replicable projects.
4. Educational utility: Projects should
be designed to involve students (undergraduate, medical, and graduate) and
the faculties (A&S, professional school) and to serve both the educational
mission of Dartmouth (through curricular as well as extracurricular contributions)
and the research interests of the faculty.
The Steering Committee welcomes proposals from any part of the Dartmouth community.
It will evaluate preliminary proposals for their promise, based on the criteria
elaborated above. Part of its responsibility will be to take proposals initiated
by one part of the institution and broaden them to include other parts of
the institution. Projects currently underway in Kosovo and Tanzania (see Program
Examples link) meet many of the new Initiative’s criteria and may provide
a template for other proposals.
The accompanying web log is intended to encourage the exchange of ideas by interested parties across the institution and to communicate progress toward the realization of the Initiative’s goals. Inputs are welcome from all sources and could include, interalia, the design of projects, suggestions for location and institutional connections overseas, offers to assist on dealing with local culture and social mores, etc.