Dear Alumni and Friends:
 It is sometimes easy to forget, as we make our way in haste through the bustling
halls, clinics, labs and lecture rooms of the Medical School, that medicine
at Michigan reaches far beyond the Ann Arbor campus and satellite clinics of
the U-M Health System. This issue of Medicine at Michigan highlights two of
the extraordinary ways in which the brilliance and commitment that characterize
our school and health system are taken to some of the farthest reaches of our
planet, often to those who need it most desperately.
It is at once remarkable and to be expected, given the caliber of students
who study medicine and biomedical research at the U-M, that many of the international
initiatives which bear the Michigan name started at the student level. From isolated ideas and individual efforts has grown a coordinated approach
to international experiences, forming a powerful program we know as Global REACH (Research, Education and Collaboration in Health). The program’s mission
is to facilitate collaboration among Medical School faculty, students and our
global partners for the benefit of patients worldwide.
Under the auspices of Global REACH, students network with other students and
faculty members to organize excursions to Central America, Africa and Asia,
to small communities where health care is often virtually nonexistent. To learn,
to educate, to treat and hopefully cure: These are the reasons students undertake
missions to assess and improve health conditions in places too poor to accomplish
such strides on their own. From conducting clinics and vaccination programs
to educating communities on local diet and nutrition, our students are making
a difference worldwide, without regard to geopolitical boundaries, and learning
in the process how to achieve maximum medical benefit from minimal health care
resources.
Throughout the Health System, teams of physicians, residents and nurses likewise
organize travel to nations lacking our resources, volunteering their Michigan
expertise in diagnosis, treatment and surgery to people who otherwise have little
or no access to quality health care or advanced procedures. Dozens
of surgeries performed within a week are not uncommon for short-term missions,
but that impact is compounded many times over by giving medical personnel in
these countries the opportunity to observe improved techniques and updated methods
of care. Helping to establish eye banks in Mongolia, providing doctors with
the latest techniques for helping children with disabilities in Malawi, working
to secure needed equipment and supplies for communities in Guatemala —
in ways such as these, U-M health care professionals are sharing their knowledge
and skills.
In an age when disease can travel as fast and as far as jet airplanes, and
cultures merge in the conduct of global business, it is the obligation of any
great academic institution to bring its resources to bear on problems and issues
outside the strict confines and limits of its campus, city or state. In concert
with teaching students to provide medical care in the context of the individual
patient — accounting for and accommodating cultural factors such as religion,
lifestyle, ethnicity and socioeconomic status — it behooves us to provide
students with the opportunity to experience and help improve health care and
social conditions in other countries. It behooves us also to march forward in
the world — in a culturally sensitive fashion — to share what we
have learned and what we can do, to improve lives lived far from our own backyards,
and to continually raise standards of care wherever we can.
The education that comes from international experiences is invaluable to our
students. The good that is accomplished by these missions — those of students
and those of seasoned physicians — is immeasurable. Everyone associated
with the U-M Medical School can and should feel great pride in the dedication
and heroic efforts of all who are seeking to improve health care and conditions
throughout the world.
Sincerely,
Allen S. Lichter (M.D. 1972)
Dean
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