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Addressing global health challenges through clinical immersion and design

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Design for Global Health Internship

  • At a glance
  • 140Student clinical immersions
  • 400Student designers
  • 7Field sites

What We've Done

~100 design projects

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Understanding the subtle cultural difficulties in the setting of intended use is close to impossible without the full immersion into that setting. Without knowing the true difficulties and how they are managed, other teams who we have had contact with have difficulty meeting the demands of their end users. Other student design teams struggle to fully understand the user requirements and find it hard to achieve them with a completed prototype based off literature before initiating contact with the end user.

Gillian Henker, CTO and co-founder of Sisu Global Health (Academic Program Participant 2010)

Why Participate in the Global Health Design Initiative (GHDI)? Learn More →

Reason A

Gain valuable professional design skills

Industry looks for prospective employees who have not only mastered skills in the classroom but successfully applied these skills in the field

Reason A

Engage first-hand in design project in an intercultural setting

Students work directly with stakeholders at international field sites and in Ann Arbor to design and prototype solutions to identified health challenges.

Reason A

Make an impact

GHDI works collaboratively with partners at UM and at international field sites to define and develop medical device designs appropriate for use in low-resource settings

Gana Image

Pictured

2017 Design for Global Health Students in Flint

This year's team included:

The first student interns and academic program students at the Hamilton Flint partner hospital.

Recent Updates

GHDI Welcomes 2018 Cohort

This summer, GHDI will have four academic program participants and nine interns working on global health design projects. Academic program participants will be completing an 8-week clinical immersion experience in either Accra, Ghana or Kumasi, Ghana. Interns will be completing 10-12 week internships in Ann Arbor, Michigan and either Kumasi, Ghana, Accra, Ghana, Flint, Michigan, or Kampala, Uganda. Student project themes include obstetrics and gynecology, family planning, emergency medicine/trauma (with a focus on physical medicine and rehabilitation), physical therapy, and patient communication and information sharing systems.

GHDI Receives ASME Engineering Education Award

Prof. Kathleen Sienko, the founder and faculty director of the Global Health Design Initiative, was awarded the ASME Engineering Education Donald N. Zwiep Innovation in Education Award. The award recognizes the Global Health Design Initiative for exceptional and innovative engagement in and fostering advances in mechanical engineering education, and for demonstrating exemplary contributions to the advancement of mechanical and multi-disciplinary project-based engineering education.