Developing a global medicine student pre- and post-travel curriculum

BACKGROUND: The popularity of short-term global health experiences amongst US medical students has been increasing. However, it remains a challenge for medical schools to comprehensively prepare students to work in an international environment and to contribute in ethically responsible and meaningful ways. Students of the Global Medicine program (GMED) of the UIC College of Medicine Center for Global Health set out to develop a pre-and-post travel curriculum that addresses some of these challenges. METHODS: The students surveyed the literature of 66 published global health curricula and identified aspects of pre-and-post travel training that were found to be under-addressed. They then developed a curriculum in conjunction with GMED faculty that incorporated these identified aspects of pre-and-post travel training. RESULTS: Five aspects of pre-and-post travel training were identified as being under-addressed in the literature while traveling. These domains include: [1] examining power relations associated with neo-colonization between and within countries; [2] training for bi-directional learning; [3] examining motivations and goals for participating in global health; [4] addressing personal resiliency and psychosocial wellbeing related to students’ travel, and; [5] reflecting on the challenging aspects of the fieldwork experience. CONCLUSIONS: The student-driven curriculum is being integrated into the GMED program through structured didactic sessions, one-on-one mentor meetings and small group discussions. Once students have traveled, the curriculum will be evaluated with the foreign partners they visited. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-023-04606-5.