IHP Health and Community: Globalization, Culture, and Care

Name: IHP Health and Community: A Whirlwind
Item: IHP Health and Community: Globalization, Culture, and Care
Rating: 10
Author: Julia D

Visit Site

Apply Now

Video and Photos

About

Investigate how communities can ensure the health and well-being of all citizens amid mounting challenges created by changing economic, environmental, and social forces.

The Health and Community program strengthens students' ability to understand, interpret and compare the biological, ecological, economic, political, and socio-cultural factors that affect human health. Students broaden their global perspective and deepen their skills in critical and comparative thinking, while gaining practical knowledge about:

The health impacts of globalization
Comparative health systems
Governance and policymaking
Public health issues and innovative strategies to address them
Field-based research methods and analysis.

Questions & Answers

Reviews

95%

based on 2 reviews

Leave a Review

Study

Academics 6
Support 9
Fun 9.5
Housing 10
Safety 9.5

Showing 1 - 2 of 2

This program is rigorous in that it demands great flexibility from participants. You are constantly traveling and seeing new things and you are faced with the challenging of staying engaged as often as possible to contextualize, observe, and reflect on your experiences. That being said, these experiences are once in a lifetime. This program included face to face interaction with healthcare practitioners, providers, and institutions of all kinds in India, China, and South Africa. Contextualizing this information with what you learn about daily life and culture in your host families gave me a richer and more complex body of knowledge about health practices and healthcare in the three countries. There's great value in the many guest lectures and site visits that are planned for you. But there was also a fair amount of time on the weekends to explore and travel more. I developed close relationships with the other students on my program through always being with each other. I saw the most beautiful places in the world, but more importantly, I saw myself grow immensely.

What would you improve about this program?

The demands in terms of academic rigor were rather light. But most frustrating was having two traveling faculty members who were less engaged with the host countries than we were. It is clear that IHP was going through transition, but I hope that future traveling faculty that know more about the countries and tackle each lesson with quite a bit more vigor.

How can I best put my IHP experience into words? Honestly. I can’t. Every time I think back to my time spent abroad with IHP, I remember so many amazing moments that stole my breath, changed my life, and rocked my world.
At the beginning of IHP you meet many alumni and faculty that throw this term ‘life-changing’ at you like they’ve been practicing the pitch for days. I thought nothing of it, when they said it. Now, I write to you to say that it is absolutely no pitch. It is the gospel truth - every word of it. I came back from my IHP trip with a whole new perspective and I completely changed my goals and plans for post-graduate life.
I can safely say that IHP has set me on the career path that I am following today. This is not a study abroad opportunity to be missed.

What would you improve about this program?

I would like to see that IHP develop a more academically rigorous program, but this is of course a result of certain traveling faculty. I also know personally that IHP has understood our concerns and plans to fix this for future programs.

About SIT Study Abroad

SIT has been providing immersive, field-based study abroad programs for undergraduates for more than 50 years. SIT offers more than 70 programs in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East, as well as comparative programs in...

Learn more →