Medical Education
Academic and Research Skills
Michelle Kiger, MD, PhD
Military Pediatric Residency Program Director
Wright-Patterson Medical Center
Beavercreek, Ohio, United States
Sebastian Lara, MD, MA
Clinical Associate Professor
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine
Catania, Sicilia, Italy
Alison Helfrich, DO, MPH (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Uniformed Services university of the health scienceS, United States
Lauren Wolf, Doctor of Medicine
Chief, AFMED Operational Quality
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine
Falls Church, Virginia, United States
Patrick Hickey, MD (he/him/his)
Professor and Chair of Pediatrics
Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine
Bethesda, Maryland, United States
Workshop
Description: Global health curricula are increasingly common within medical schools and pediatric residency programs, and humanitarian and disaster relief operations are an important element of such training. Pediatricians in the U.S. military frequently play a large role in these operations, and the military employs a course known as the Military Medical Humanitarian Assistance Course (MMHAC) to train residents and faculty for this work. The MMHAC covers three categories of topics: (1) medical management of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and diarrhea and dehydration; (2) logistical and public health principles; and (3) ethical considerations. Lessons learned from teaching and revising this course for over 20 years, along with experiences of military physicians recently involved in humanitarian support of displaced persons from Afghanistan, can inform curricula in civilian medical schools and pediatric residency programs wishing to build or augment training in global health for their learners. In this workshop, we will provide an outline for building or expanding humanitarian and disaster response training for pediatric learners based on Kern’s six-step approach to curriculum development, with a focus on active learning from the MMHAC. Lessons and exercises from this workshop can be applied to a short-exposure course or as part of a larger global health elective or track. Participants will be able to experience hands-on, interactive activities from the MMHAC that they can incorporate or adapt into their own curricula. These team-based activities are what military physicians who took the course 10 or more years prior still remembered and were able to apply during recent missions.