Expanding Horizons: Falks-Griffin Global Health Endowment

Thanks to Falks-Griffin Global Health Endowment funds, four MUSC College of Nursing Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) students had the unique opportunity this past spring to virtually take part in the Consortium of Universities in Global Health (CUGH) 2021 conference, one of the premier conferences in the field.  

“Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, we were successful in using the Falks-Griffin funds to have a virtual global health experience for our DNP students,” said Director for Global Health and Associate Professor Suparna Qanungo, Ph.D. “The funds provided our students with something very new that they had never experienced, and they were grateful.” 

Through their interactions with global health experts and sessions about global health topics, students forged new connections and perspectives. Below, they share the significance of this meaningful, enriching experience. 

Holleigh Maddren 

“Being able to attend the CUGH was so incredibly powerful. Seeing leaders from all over the world being able to collaborate really emphasized how small the healthcare community is. Additionally, the confirmation that the health issues being faced in small communities are occurring all over the world helped to provide novel ideas for addressing ongoing health issues in underserved areas.  The CUGH conference provided me with so much information and new ideas to incorporate into my growing clinical knowledge base. I have continued to listen to the recordings and hope that I am afforded the opportunity to attend in the coming years.” 

Candice Demers 

“I have always lived by the motto ‘be the change you wish to see in the world,’ and after attending CUGH 2021, I realized just how little I have been applying that to my career! It is a very humbling experience to find out how little I really know about global issues! I have been praying for my passion to be reignited, and it started as a spark when I began my DNP program in August 2020. Now, there is fire in my soul that makes me want to pursue global health. It truly WAS a once in a lifetime experience.  

We must look at High Income Countries (HICs) and Low Middle Income Countries (LMICs) as a partnership in addressing global health issues. This means that as a team, we need to look at each other as colleagues on the frontlines, in manuscript, authorship, and project development. It means recognizing that although someone comes from an LMIC does not mean they have any less to offer. Everyone’s opinion matters.” 

Missi Firth 

“This experience was meaningful in a variety of ways, not simply because it was a first for me—to participate in a conference of this magnitude—but because of how I was able to reconnect to the reasons I am a nurse in the first place. Working in a suburban/urban emergency department, it’s easy to forget the upstreaming processes that would help our patients as we tend only to focus on fixing today’s problem, but not the root cause. This conference has re-inspired me to look once again upstream and get involved where I can. The reconnection to that desire has been the most prominent, meaningful outcome from the conference for me.  

From my attendance at the conference, I came away with a reimagining of healthcare as it stands today and how it connects to the evolving world. Before the conference, if I heard the world “globalization,” healthcare would have been low on the list of things that came to mind after technology, communication, food, culture, etc. However, all of those sectors affect and transform healthcare delivery across all borders. If our world’s fractured response to COVID-19 has taught us nothing else, it’s that health is global; what happens in one part of the world affects others and greatly so. We need to strengthen the structural vulnerabilities and democratize our health systems all over the globe to battle what ails all of us successfully.”  

Jonathan Helms

“Those who have a desire to improve the healthcare system locally or worldwide heard diverse perspectives on how we got to where we are, where we are going, and the multiple contexts where healthcare is delivered. The context of healthcare delivery was the focus and is going to be different for each.

I learned another perspective for allocating healthcare. The important takeaway is that there are caring people who want to focus on the sectors where they bring passion to their focus. No matter if it is locally, nationally, or worldwide, the Bootu philosophy of ‘I am because you are’ is embraced in their efforts for diversity and equality so that the world has a voice on the quality of their lives.”