Curriculum
Using a multidisciplinary approach, the program’s goals are to increase health care and other professionals’ knowledge of some basic principles and skills essential to complex humanitarian emergency work. The program also has the goal of increasing participants’ awareness of their leadership styles and potential, and how to mobilize these to best provide leadership as first responders during local and global humanitarian emergencies. The experiential curriculum’s overall goal is to impart team building, leadership and other specific skills to those in global health training programs.
Through experiential education, the following specific skills will be learned or developed:
- Leadership skills, including team building, for crisis situations
- GPS mapping skills
- Cluster survey design and administration
- Design of an implementation plan, a monitoring plan, a budget and a transition/exit strategy
- Basic emergency medical care/triage in resource-scarce settings
- Public health interventions in crisis situations including water, food, and sanitation plans based on the SPHERE standards
- Presenting to and interacting with the media
- Ensuring personal safety and navigating security situations
- Understanding of the Geneva Convention
Objectives
Leadership/Teamwork
Specifically, each participant will be able to:
- Identify their areas of strength as leaders, and areas of potential growth.
- Describe two styles of leadership. Describe one style that you naturally take on.
- Give one example of how you work effectively in a team. Give one example of where you could improve your effectiveness in the future.
Other Skills
- Use GPS mapping technology to map and find an object or point of interest.
- Explain the basic principles of cluster surveys, when they are useful, and the limitations of them. Demonstrate the ability to outline a simple cluster survey strategy for a given situation.
- List two important considerations for an injured person who is bleeding in a wilderness area. List two important considerations for a person with a head injury leading to unconsciousness in a wilderness area. Demonstrate one physical technique for controlling risks when trying to transport a person in each of these situations.
- Calculate the total amount of water needed for a population of a specific size. Calculate the total amount of food/calories needed for the same population. List three priorities for sanitation in a complex emergency situation. Explain the advantages and disadvantages of at least two strategies for each priority.
- Present to the media on a subject of importance to you in two minutes. List three strategies to effectively communicate your ideas to the television media.
- List two concepts important for maintaining personal safety in a complex emergency.
- List two basic rights afforded by the Geneva Convention.