This fall’s new half-semester, 6-unit, elective, open to all registered students, is offered late October to early December. It’s 15.965, Global Health Delivery and Management.
Why global health delivery and management? Modern medicine could reduce disease greatly, yet fails to reach millions in Africa and elsewhere. Could better business models help? Innovations in technology, process, and finance may address constraints, but we need to understand how. We’ll study real-world enterprises that deliver health care in resource-limited settings, looking at what works and what doesn’t. We start with an overview of the issues, then examine cases that highlight income generation, social enterprise, scalability, and sustainability for front-line enterprises. Students choose an organization or program to analyze, sharing operational and strategic insights with the class and tapping into experts and the entire class for lively discussions.
COMING THIS SPRING Global Health Delivery Lab
New full-semester class. 9 units + 2 SIP credits to include 2 weeks on site (SIP and Spring Break). Letter grade. Graduate students only. Admission by application and interview; preference for students with 15.965.
Addresses pressing challenges facing a carefully selected set of partner enterprises delivering health care in resource-limited settings in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. Built around our projects, course examines relevant frameworks and approaches, with interactive team sessions designed to draw on the entire class. Partners may be clinics, hospitals, or community programs; projects may address strategy, scale and sustainability, business models, or process improvement. Having prepared for 6 weeks, each four-student team spends two mid-semester weeks in their partner organization working on their project, wrapping up in the month after returning to MIT. Along the way we tap into a wealth of relevant knowledge and experience in MIT and wider communities and consider tools and frameworks that prove useful in the field. Want to learn more? Here’s an early draft syllabus.
