BOSTON – The Global Health Delivery Project has released 21 teaching case studies that examine the complexity of bringing life-saving technologies and care to resource-poor settings around the world.
These multidisciplinary materials, which include case studies from 13 countries, are available to global health educators, students and practitioners at no cost through Harvard Business Publishing.
"The publication of these cases – online, and freely accessible to the practitioners, students and educators who will benefit most from them – is an important step toward closing the know-do gap in global health," said Paul Farmer, MD, chair of Harvard Medical School's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine. "Increasingly, our feedback loop of research, teaching and service is directly strengthening the care we deliver on the ground and our ability to replicate and scale successes."
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Four years ago, Farmer and Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, together with Dartmouth College President Jim Kim, MD, launched this effort with the goal of systematizing the study of global health delivery and rapidly disseminating knowledge to implementers. The cases document the operations of healthcare delivery programs in resource-constrained settings, and include supplemental materials for instructors to help stimulate and guide discussions.
"I think of the [teaching] cases on a regular basis-remembering what others have done, relating that to the options available to me, and trying to use their lessons to inform my own decisions," said Dan Schwarz, executive director of Nyaya Health, a community-based healthcare organization in rural Nepal. "To be able to share in [other leaders'] experiences and lessons has been, and continues to be, of profound benefit to my work."
The Global Health Delivery Project is a collaboration among Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. All 21 case studies are available to healthcare practitioners and implementers through Harvard Business Publishing and through GHDonline.org, a website where global health implementers connect and exchange lessons learned.
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"These cases capture the richness and complexity of actually delivering care in a variety of settings to help practitioners understand the principles of delivering high value care tailored to the medical condition and the populations served," said Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School.
Porter added that he hopes the body of case studies will inspire far more study of the science of global health delivery – which he says is a crucial bottleneck in improving health in impoverished settings worldwide.
The Global Health Delivery case studies describe public and private programs delivering treatment, care and prevention for a variety of diseases in developing countries such as Rwanda, Haiti and India. The case method, pioneered by the faculty of Harvard Business School, puts students in the roles of decision-makers and teaches them how to make decisions in real-life settings, where information can be ambiguous and where the politics, economics and geography of a country must be considered.
Officials say the cases offer students the opportunity to analyze the principles of healthcare delivery, strategy and management and to understand the complexities surrounding implementation, scale-up and sustainability over time.
"The release of these cases is an important next step toward our goal of improving healthcare delivery through global collaboration and is representative of Brigham and Women's Hospital's commitment to reducing health disparities for all communities," said Elizabeth Nabel, MD, president of Brigham and Women's Hospital. "We are particularly gratified to be able to assist those global practitioners and educators for whom access to such high-quality information has been unattainable."
The Global Health Delivery Project aims to promote case-based learning globally by hosting faculty training workshops across Africa and by building a network of global health delivery educators.
Access the case studies at GHDonline.org/cases.
