MSIH alumni make a difference in so many ways, one of which is the impact they have on current MSIH students. Over the course of the last two and half months, almost twenty MSIH alums have been guest lecturers at MSIH. By sharing their breadth and depth of knowledge and experience with current students, they are helping to teach the next generation of physicians. Alumni from the first graduating class of 2002, all the way through last years graduating class of 2021, have volunteered to give back in this manor. The topics they have covered are broad and will certainly help shape and guide our students.

In this two part series, we will highlight some of the alumni who served as guest lecturers.

Global Health

The global health topics covered in 2022 range from being a global health practitioner to working with specific populations. Martin Gibbs, M.D. (2014), is currently a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Tulane University. Previously, Dr. Gibbs completed a Global Health/Hospital Medicine Fellowship with the University of Florida. This year-long program allowed him to provide healthcare to under-served communities in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Gainesville, Florida. Dr. Gibbs gave a lecture on How Not to do Global Health. Dr. Gibbs is particularly interested in pulmonary and critical care, an often neglected area of global health. While critical care is a particularly resource-intensive area of medicine, there are often ICU-level resources even in the poorest countries, but he notes that training is needed to make the best use of these resources for the sickest patients.

An Pham, M.D., M.P.H., also from the MSIH Class of 2014, completed her residency and internship at Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. She completed her fellowship at the University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital. Dr. Pham specializes in Adolescent Medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Richmond, VA. Her lecturer entitled How to & When to Discuss Gender focused on creating safe and affirming clinical spaces that are welcoming. Dr. Pham presented numerous studies which show that transgender youth do not see their doctors as much as cisgender youth do. She stressed how “using correct names and pronouns is vital to inclusive and sustainable care.” Dr. Pham also shared the Gender Unicorn with students and how that can be used to have important discussions with adolescent patients. Her session involved role playing and was extremely well received by current MSIH students.

These alumni exemplify how MSIH alumni are committed not only to impacting the lives of their patients, but to impacting the training of future global health practitioners.