There is a near universal consensus that challenges to providing health care to our populations can no longer be defined or confined by national borders. The state of global health and health care directly impacts the ability to deliver locally on the social contract between medical professionals worldwide and the public they serve. Therefore, to gain understanding and develop approaches, ongoing discussions must reflect a global nature and transcend political, cultural, and social boundaries to meet the challenges of an interconnected world.
Although the ACGME’s primary activity is to accredit graduate medical education programs and their institutional sponsors in the United States, its Mission is to improve health care and population health by assessing and enhancing the quality of resident and fellow physicians' education. The ACGME recognizes the global nature of medicine, public health, and heath care, and seeks to engage with stakeholders, experts, health care professionals, policymakers, and others worldwide.
A Content Series to Promote Discourse
ACGME Global Services, a department of the ACGME, was created to advance the ACGME Mission by working with global entities to enhance the quality of resident and fellow physicians’ education. Alongside its advisory services, ACGME Global Services seeks to contribute to the conversation on the state and future of health care and its provision. One channel of discussion being launched today is this ACGME Blog series, The ACGME and Global Health.
The first few posts will open the conversation by addressing several naturally interlinked topics.
- First, we will discuss the importance of post-graduate medical education (PGME) globally, focusing on its direct relationship with delivering quality health care.
- Next, we will consider the ACGME and global health, elaborating on the role that ACGME Global Services plays in that effort.
- Then, we will highlight the value of accreditation in medical education, providing examples of how accreditation directly correlates with quality health care delivery.
- And, finally, we’ll explore key themes in post-pandemic PGME, as curated from discussions with thought leaders worldwide, expanding on what we have learned during this unique global health care crisis.
A sidenote on nomenclature: “PGME” will be the preferred term used in this series. While the ACGME refers to graduate medical education (GME), ACGME Global Services uses PGME to harmonize with the terminology employed by a large part of the international medical education community.
We invite you to join the conversation! We welcome comments by email to global@acgme.org and through Twitter and LinkedIn (with the hashtag #ACGMEGlobalServices). Different and diverse perspectives are vital to enable the medical and health care communities to cooperatively move forward towards the mutual goal of improving health care and population health locally, regionally—and indeed, globally.
The goal of this content series is to provoke discussion about issues that concern the global PGME community, enabling critical conversation that engages with stakeholders across borders, disciplines, and perspectives. We invite comments by email (global@acgme.org) and through Twitter (with the hashtag #ACGMEGlobalServices) and LinkedIn. We also seek external voices in future posts in the ACGME and Global Health Blog series; please email global@acgme.org if you would like to participate.