For North Carolina Medical Residents 2012 
Overview
Project HOPE has established an endowment to support a Dr. Charles A. Sanders/Project HOPE International Residency Scholarship Program, in which selected medical resident physicians from North Carolina will be offered, through a competitive application, scholarship funding for a one to two month supervised global health elective at a HOPE program site. This scholarship will be coordinated and supported by the UNC School of Medicine Office of International Activities and is open to medical residents from any specialty from UNC/Chapel Hill, Duke University, East Carolina University, and Wake Forest University.
The Dr. Charles A. Sanders Legacy
Charles A. Sanders, M.D. has dedicated his career to extending the benefits of medical care to people and communities in need around the world, and to advancing the role of physicians in this humanitarian endeavor. Over the course of this distinguished career, his knowledge and commitment have been employed in the corporate sector (including leadership positions at Glaxo and directorships at several biopharmaceutical companies); academic medicine (University of North Carolina Health Care System, Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital); national research organizations (National Institutes of Health, Institute of Medicine); and the international NGO sector (a member of the Project HOPE Board of Directors for 21 years and Chairman of the Board for 18).
Dr. Sanders is the longest-serving Chair in Project HOPE’s 53-year history. Apart from HOPE’s founder Dr. William B. Walsh, no individual has made a greater contribution to the growth and international expansion of the organization and to its stature as a global leader in health education, medical training, and humanitarian assistance. As a physician, Dr. Sanders has maintained HOPE’s focus on building the capacity of health care delivery systems in developing and emerging countries around the world by training physicians and other professionals. This scholarship program recognizes and honors this commitment and supports the vital work to which Dr. Sanders has dedicated his life.
Details of the Residency Scholarship Program (click here to download the application)
- Participating Institutions
The Dr. Charles A Sanders/Project HOPE Residency Scholarship would be offered annually, administered by the University of North Carolina School of Medicine Office of International Activities to resident physicians from North Carolina’s four academic medical universities (University of North Carolina, Duke University, Wake Forest University, and Eastern Carolina University).
The Scholarship would be competitive, with applications open to resident physicians who have completed at least the first year of postgraduate training from the participating institutions. Applicants would be expected to demonstrate an interest and commitment to the practice of medicine in a low-resource international setting. Other criteria, including appropriate foreign language skills, would be established by Project HOPE in consultation with the Office of International Activities and the program Advisory Board, and dependent on proposed placement site. (Given that countries where English is widely used would attract and be suitable for the greatest number of applicants, foreign language skills may be desirable, but will not be a pre-requisite for the scholarship.) All scholarship recipients must complete travel health and safety requirements under the auspices of the UNC School of Medicine, Office of International Activities (even for medical residents from other universities) which includes obtaining emergency evacuation insurance and on-line preparation modules.
Project HOPE currently works in 36 countries around the world – with program sites in Latin America and the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa, China and Southeast Asia, Russia/Eurasia, and the Middle East. In some projects and country sites, Project HOPE works in partnership with the Department of Defense and US military services to increase capacity during humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations. The site selected for each rotation will have strong in-country HOPE and supervising physician leadership and a clinical program in which a resident physician could make a contribution to the local health education and health care delivery systems. Given that all residencies require physician supervision, HOPE-affiliated physicians in the host country would commit to providing the requisite clinical supervision at the site. In making assignments, Project HOPE will seek to ensure consistency of annual program sites, to enable the development of a supportive infrastructure on the site and to foster relationships with the residents’ schools. An individualized scope of work would be developed for each scholarship, including objectives and an appropriate academic product. With each assignment, the scholarship recipient will be required to submit a blog during the scholarship which will be posted on the Project HOPE website as well as a submission of a human interest story with a picture describing what the scholarship recipient did and how they contributed to the people they helped. The scholar will be encouraged to engage in a scholarly project as well. The Project HOPE scholarship will cover all costs related to the elective including costs of preparation/orientation, evacuation insurance and travel health costs, airflight, and in-country daily stipend.
For the first rotation, the proposed site will be in the Dominican Republic where Project HOPE has collaborated with the local non-governmental organization (NGO) Order of Malta to improve the health of women and children. In 2002, the partnership began operating a maternal and child health clinic in Santo Domingo. Self-sustainable within a year, the clinic became the model for a second clinic in Monte Plata, a rural district situated approximately two hours north of the capital, in the country’s central area. Now run by a local partner, the clinics continue to receive technical oversight from Project HOPE to optimize efficiency, providing more than one million services to over 80,000 women and children to date.
The scholarship recipient(s) will be interning at the Monte Plata clinic where high quality PHC/MCH services are provided at low cost, including: antenatal and postpartum check-ups, vitamin and mineral supplements during pregnancy, pediatric services, dental care, lab tests, pharmacy, gynecology care, timely detection of cervical, uterine and breast cancer, sonograms, vaccinations, monitoring of child growth and development and nutritional evaluation, general medicine, psychology, HIV counseling, home visits, technical support, coordination with other sector institutions, training of health care professionals, community members and health education for the general population. The scholarship recipient(s) will have an opportunity to work in any of the above areas as determined by him/her in collaboration with Project HOPE DR and Monte Plata clinic teams. He/she will be supervised by Monte Plata clinic’s Dr. Desire Guzman, serving as preceptor to the scholarship recipient(s). Ms. Teresa Navarrez is the Project HOPE Domincan Republic Country Director, providing additional onsite assistance to the resident.
Annual scholarship applications will be available January 15th, with an application deadline of February 29th; candidate review, screening, and phone interviews in March and final decision making by the advisory board on April 1st. The selected candidate(s) will be able to schedule an orientation with the Project HOPE office in Virginia during June. Deployment to the field will take place during the July-March timeframe, depending on the schedules and availability of the residents selected, in coordination with the HOPE host site. Click here to DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION
Project HOPE and the UNC Office of International Activities will collaborate on resident orientation, which will include a review of the scope of work and expectations, HOPE and University policies and procedures, travel and on-site logistical arrangements, etc. Initially, the scholarship would be awarded to one resident annually, with potential expansion as funding allows.
