Our Work

Global Health Certificate students spent 10 days in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil learning how an organization there called Saúde Criança helps families improve health outcomes by addressing social factors. 

Saúde Criança, which means “Healthy Children,” is a 25-year-old program replicated across 31 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. UMSON Global Health students returned from Brazil with a roadmap to improve conditions in Baltimore.

The 14-year civil crisis in Liberia lead to the destruction of hospitals and clinics and the shut down of most educational programs, causing medical professionals to leave the country and a devastated economy. 

In collaboration with Mother Patern College of Health Sciences in Liberia, UMSON proposed and helped implement a Primary Health Care Specialist master’s program to increase the competence of workers and quality of patient care. 

In 2012, Rwanda was fighting to train qualified health professionals to address critical global health issues of HIV/AIDS, malaria, chronic disease, and infant mortality. The Rwandan Ministry of Health's solution was to develop a well-educated workforce to provide safe and effective health care.

Through the program, Rwanda partnered with a dozen U.S. colleges and universities, including UMSON, to bring their faculty to schools and hospitals throughout the country. By the time UMSON's five-year participation ended, it had vetted and filled 36 faculty positions, the most of any participating institution.

In Nigeria, the main point of free, accessible health care is the primary health care center. Yet the quality of care available in these centers is often inadequate and contributes to the poor health outcomes found in the Nigerian population.

UMSON's Office of Global Health worked closely with the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute of Human Virology to develop the Primary Health Care Specialist Diploma program designed to rapidly and effectively address the immediate need for greater competency and skill development.