Welcome to the IHF website!  We are a student group at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine that encourages the understanding of international health issues through lunch meetings, projects, and providing information on international opportunities available to UNC students.  We hope that this site will be useful to anyone who is interested in learning about any aspect of global health.

Background:
The School of Medicine has a long and distinguished history of international activity. Throughout the School's fifty years as four-year institution, faculty members and students have studied the impact of global health and disease upon their own interests and those of their current and future patients. They have collaborated with research colleagues in foreign institutions, exchanged teaching and learning settings with peers in other countries, and experienced firsthand the difficulties and rewards of providing medical care, conducting research and studying medicine under conditions far different from those at home, but conditions which provide valuable insight into North Carolina's health care needs.

Each year between 30 and 40 School of Medicine students travel abroad for international projects and electives. Many of these projects are arranged individually by students with the help of faculty mentors. Other students participate in programs that have been designed by School of Medicine faculty and cooperating colleagues abroad.