Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, United States
Universidad Panamericana, Distrito Federal, Ciudad de México, Mexico
Public Health in Mexico: A Collaborative and Comparative Framework for Learning
With the support of the 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund, Northwestern University (NU) developed an eight-week summer study abroad program, “Public Health in Mexico,” which brought undergraduate students from NU to Universidad Panamericana (UP) in Mexico City for classes and research, and UP students to NU. During the spring of 2015, UP students and faculty traveled to participate in a pre-departure workshop with NU students on the topics of obesity and nutrition at NU. The students from both universities then worked together to conduct their research, focused on childhood obesity and the perceptions of obesity as a health problem, in the small town of Malinaclo, Mexico. In the first year, eleven (11) NU students participated in the program, but, with the extension of the grant, eleven (11) additional students participated in the second year, for a total of twenty-two (22) NU students participating in the program during the grant period. A total of six (6) UP students traveled to NU for the workshop. Four (4) of the UP students who participated in the NU workshop and conducted research in Mexico presented their projects at the “Building Bridges between Basic and Clinical Science” research meeting at UP, all earning recognition for their work. NU and UP were successful in implementing a sustainable program and have received great feedback from students, who cite their experiences as motivation for pursuing additional research opportunities and consider their time in the program influential.