A Novel, Open-Access Family Medicine Residency Global Health Toolkit

There are no established family medicine (FM) residency-level global health objectives or curricula for program directors who want to offer ethical and meaningful global health experiences to residents. We sought to develop and evaluate a toolkit of resources that family medicine educators can use to improve residents' knowledge of this important aspect of family practice.

We reviewed and categorized peer-reviewed and grey literature publications and global health curricula from FM and non-FM residency programs related to clinical topics, standards of global health practice and partnerships, decolonization, and others. The toolkit uses six standard Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies to organize learning objectives, content areas, and resources. Resources were further categorized based on complexity, cost, and time. We developed the toolkit with a focus on patient safety and ethical engagement with global partners. We evaluated the toolkit using an online survey of global health educators from inside and outside the United States.

The toolkit was vetted by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Board of Directors and published as an open-access resource on the STFM website (https://stfm.org/teachingresources/curriculum/globalhealthtoolkit/overview/).The toolkit had 1,446 unique views in the 18 months after it was published. Most global health educators surveyed found the toolkit to be appropriate for resident-level education and ethically sound. Respondents indicated that they would most likely use the toolkit to improve an existing global health experience or track.

A novel toolkit provides resources curated and presented by topic, complexity, and estimated cost that residency programs can use to create or augment global health offerings. Educators can use resources and associated learning objectives presented using standard ACGME competencies to connect knowledge, skills, and attitudes gained through global health education to their residents' overall learning needs.