Pathway to Discovery in Global Health
Projects and Legacies
The legacy product for the pathway in global health will be a required scholarly project focused on research, education or health intervention. Legacy products will include building or adding to ongoing longitudinal research projects, health intervention programs, or educational efforts at the various field sites. The legacy projects will be evaluated by a committee, including members of the Graduate Group in Global Health Sciences.
In addition to scholarly academic merit, global health legacy products should demonstrate benefit to the country or populations within which they are conducted, along with a degree of longevity or sustainability.
Legacy projects can be publications, or quality manuscripts. The latter would be evaluated and held up to a quality standard by the Graduate Group. This would include the expectation that the manuscript adds some knowledge to the field, is an original review of a topic area, and is of publishable quality.
Research reports may be judged purely on their research value, but the benefit to the research subjects and how the research results will be disseminated back to them will also be considered.
Ideally, a legacy report will comprise original research, but time and other constraints may limit the ability to collect sufficient original data. In this case, an adequate review of relevant literature along with a full report on the research activity will be an adequate legacy.
Legacy products can also be curricular project with clear linkage to the Pathways such as a formal case study for use in the curriculum or a short course that is actually conducted. The former should be peer reviewed in an appropriate venue such as MedEd Portal, and both should have evaluation components included and reported on.
Another legacy product category is production of a policy document that serves the needs of a host country, agency, or project. One example would be a program evaluation with measurable outcomes and recommendations for improvement. Outside of the academic arena, this is the type of relevant legacy product expected in global health. This product would also be held to the standard by the Graduate Group of being potentially publishable.
To help the graduate group with product evaluations we will require standardized reports from the UCSF mentor, and if a project is done at an international site, an evaluation report sent from that site by a UCSF faculty member, or a host site supervisor.
The experiential component of the pathway includes the possibility of working in international settings for development or implementation of projects. The timing of these activities will be shaped partly by the specific school and/or program of each trainee.
Some students may elect to increase this experiential time by adding an extra year to their training, to enroll in the UCSF Masters Program in Global Health (see below), to get an MPH, or to pursue other options for a 5th year, including a variety of fellowship/funded opportunities. Experiential learning includes opportunities in an international setting to do clinical work, research, or program evaluation or implementation, including medical education programs. Such opportunities will be preferentially focused in areas where UCSF has established or is establishing long-term relationships, such as Tanzania and other East African countries.
Project abstracts and posters are available online to UCSF learners with Galen IDs. Undergraduate Professional School learners can use the link below. Other UCSF learners who wish to access this material can contact Pathways to Discovery Coordinator, Renee Courey.
Undergraduate Professional School Learners
