Education
AIGHD continued its education efforts at Bachelor and Master level mainly in two education programs: the Medical Bachelor and Master Program at Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam (UvA), and the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Master’s Global Health Program.
We understand education's pivotal role in global health and development, whether it pertains to building health capacity in low-resource settings or training a new generation of researchers here in the Netherlands.
At the undergraduate level, AIGHD facilitated Bachelor of Medicine students with individual elective tracks and with bachelor thesis projects.
In addition to the individual elective track and bachelor thesis projects, AIGHD offered a skills working group called Cholera in Yemen to all second-year medical students, introducing them to humanitarian crises, epidemics, ethics, and interdisciplinary collaboration. In this case study, students participated in a roleplay exercise as stakeholders in a refugee camp with an impending cholera outbreak.
In collaboration with the Vrije Universiteit (VU), AIGHD offers a two-year research Master’s Degree program in Global Health. Since 2012, AIGHD has coordinated curriculum elements of this program and continues to be an active participant in the coordinating team. AIGHD hosts academic internships for master’s students, allowing them to gain hands-on, practical skills in global health research. In 2022, AIGHD hosted 14 academic internships for VU students and 2 for students from other study programs.
Though teaching during a global pandemic remained a challenge, AIGHD’s education team collaborated with various parties to find novel ways to facilitate learning digitally. For more information on our education programs and academic internships, please visit the AIGHD website, and to learn more about last year’s elective courses, you can read this article.
PhD and Intern Testimonials
PhD and Intern Testimonials
Sneha Kotian
She/her, Second year PhD Student, joined AIGHD in 2022
Sneha joined AIGHD as part of her PhD program at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. She works together with her supervisor, AIGHD Director for Science Constance Schultz, to study which is focused on developing strategies to prioritize population-based antimicrobial resistance (AMR) surveillance using modelling approaches, with a specific focus on lower-middle-income countries.
Sneha sat down with our communications officer to talk about her experience as a PhD student at AIGHD. She describes being part of the organization as a 'way to access people who are knowledgeable in the field' but also mentions that the variety of perspectives and the interdisciplinary composition of AIGHD's experts give her a much broader lens to look at her own research.
When asked if she would recommend the program to others, Sneha said, "Definitely. I think it's a great team to work with, because you can see a multidisciplinary angle coming up," and in a following statement she said, "I think being able to have genuine conversations around you and with people also being very approachable makes the program highly recommendable."
Derrick Semugenze
He/him, Third Year PhD Student at the Amsterdam UMC, joined AIGHD in 2022
Derrick joined the PhD program at the Amsterdam University Medical Center and consequently joined AIGHD as part of the project he's working on for his research. Together with our former Executive Director, Frank Cobelens, Derrick is exploring the various interactions between viruses and Tuberculosis in Uganda. Derrick is not currently in the Netherlands. Instead, he is doing his research on ground in Uganda and is doing his program remotely.
Despite the distance, Derrick feels that because of AIGHD, "It kind of gives me a touch or a presence of being in the university environment itself in Amsterdam." He originally joined the program as a way to learn from more experienced figures in the field and to use AIGHD as a platform for accessing stronger networks in his field of research.
Derrick also utilizes our Friday Research Meetings, which are weekly sessions where a speaker talks about their current research work, as a way to broaden his knowledge building capacity and perspectives and to talk to his fellow Ugandan PhDs also remotely doing their PhDs at the Amsterdam UMC.
"(Through AIGHD) I get to know other activities that are non-academic that are happening in the scientific world. I got to know about how scientists are more involved in activism about climate change, so it's not about science per se, but also other aspects surrounding it."
Intern Testimonials
Nik
“AIGHD provides a space where I was able to speak with senior researchers about their experiences and career paths. It is a really experienced organization where I got to learn qualitative data gathering methods and work on huge research projects in collaboration with different researchers in interdisciplinary fields. I also really appreciate the social events that AIGHD has helped organize for interns.”
Bich
"I really enjoyed my AIGHD internship because I felt like I was really a part of the H-Team project and was given the space to voice my opinions. I chose AIGHD because I wanted to learn more about intervention research and applying research into real-world settings as well as being a part of an international organization."