Complex Humanitarian Emergency Leadership and Training Program
The United Nations defines a complex humanitarian emergency (CHE) as “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region, or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single and/or ongoing UN country program.”
Such emergencies require adapted, focused, and pragmatic field responses to be organized within short time frames, often under difficult accessibility, security, and climate conditions. Over the years, operational efficiency in the field has increased thanks to research carried out during CHEs.
The UCSF CHE Leadership Training Program is centered on an exercise that recreates refugee camps along a civil unrest area (based on real events along the Chad-Sudan border), in a remote Bay Area location over two days and one night.
UCSF and UCB global health trainees in a variety of programs will learn skills as they create a service delivery plan to provide relief to Darfur refugees, role-played by volunteers and faculty. Students will perform assessments of the situation and then develop plans for security, nutrition, water and sanitation and medical care to meet the health needs of the simulated population. These tasks will be completed under an increasingly intensifying security situation with military checkpoints, rebel attacks, and security evacuations modeled after recent actual events along the Chad-Sudan border. Through experiential learning, the participants will be challenged in decision-making and team-building. Students are evaluated by faculty and peers on the quality of their final plan, and are given feedback on their group and individual leadership and teamwork.
The CHE program is open to all UCSF Global health Pathway, Framework, Global Health Clinical Scholars, Masters and UCB School of Public Health students.
To learn more about upcoming the CHE Leadership Program contact Dr. Chris Stewart, program director.