Global Health Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges, Adaptations, and Lessons Learned

TLDR

Global health education aims to improve quality, access, community excellence, and sustainability, evolving from passive lecture‑based courses to hybrid online programs with intensive hands‑on components. The study shares a framework and lessons from transitioning to fully online global health programs, aiming to inspire other institutions to innovate for quality, access, community, sustainability, and lower environmental impact. The authors transitioned their decade‑long hybrid curriculum to a fully online format, implementing active learning models, synchronous sessions, and innovative virtual hands‑on experiences. The new fully online model retained efficient on‑demand didactics, was well received, and increased access while dramatically reducing the program’s carbon footprint.

Abstract

Global health education programs should strive continually to improve the quality of education, increase access, create communities that foster excellence in global health practices, and ensure sustainability. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the University of Minnesota's extensive global health education programs, which includes a decade of hybrid online and in-person programing, to move completely online. We share our experience, a working framework for evaluating global health educational programming, and lessons learned. Over the decades we have moved from a predominantly passive, lecture-based, in-person course to a hybrid online (passive) course with an intensive hands-on 2-week requirement. The pandemic forced us to explore new active online learning models. We retained our on-demand, online passive didactics, which used experts' time efficiently and was widely accessible and well received. In addition, we developed a highly effective synchronous online component that we felt replaced some of the hands-on activities effectively and led us to develop new and innovative "hands-on" experiences. This new, fully online model combining quality asynchronous and synchronous learning provided many unanticipated advantages, such as increasing access while decreasing our carbon footprint dramatically. By sharing our experience, lessons learned, and resources, we hope to inspire other programs likewise to innovate to improve quality, access, community, and sustainability in global health, especially if these innovations can help decrease negative aspects of global health education such as its environmental impact.