Today, the Global Health Delivery team concluded the first Introduction to Global Health Delivery course at Harvard School of Public Health. The course was co-taught by Drs. Jim Kim and Joseph Rhatigan and utilized the Harvard Business School case method. The case method is designed to bring the complexity of real-world decision-making challenges into the classroom: students learn experientially by exercising leadership and teamwork skills.

The primary teaching materials for the course were global health case studies that the GHD team of case writers has developed over the past year. The cases covered a variety of global health topics including HIV testing in Haiti, HIV care in rural Rwanda, the 100% condom campaign in Thailand, tuberculosis control in Peru and polio elimination in India. Case-based classroom discussion explored themes such as the complexity of health care delivery in resource-poor settings; the role of context-dependent social, biological and political factors; value creation within health care infrastructure; relationships between operations and strategy; and leadership and management practices.

Initial student feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Students – a total of 30 people for this first ever GHD course – remarked that their learning felt immediately transferable to real world situations they expect to encounter.

Last but far from least, we now plan to expand this course to a semester-long offering that will cover a broader range of health topics. Additionally, we hope to offer topic-specific courses as our case library grows. More updates on our academic offering coming soon!

The GHD team would like to extend special thanks to our guest lecturers:

Michael E. Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, Harvard Business School
Richard M. J. Bohmer, Lecturer, Harvard Business School
Dr. Pedro Suarez, former Director, National TB Control Program in Peru
Dr. Heidi Behforouz, Director, PACT Project
Dr. Joia Mukherjee, Medical Director, Partners In Health