Global Health Service Corps

Please read this message from the Global Health Service Corps.

We are reaching out to ask for your Public Health Student Organization support for a program – the Global Health Service Corps: An Unconventional Prescription for Diplomacy (www.globalhealthservicecorps.org).  As you are well aware, the last decade has seen a massive surge in interest and attention for Global Health.  As a Marshall Plan for Health, the GHSC would support skilled health professionals – physicians, nurses, public health professionals and others - to work in developing countries through loan forgiveness and scholarship. These corps members would be positioned in structured programs and partnerships to serve as well as to provide education, training, and capacity building efforts for long-term sustainable development. The program is designed to help harness the vast energy and interest of many health professionals to engage in global health and to align it with prescriptive programs in partnership and collaboration with the countries where we work.  We believe that there is a new window of opportunity for the GHSC to become a U.S government program and to help change how we engage in diplomacy and development.  The GHSC can help bolster how the United States engages the world, invests in its global health initiatives, and can help strengthen health capacity in partner countries.

We have been working with Paul Farmer and other global health leaders to lay the groundwork for Congressional legislation and are now reaching out to student and youth groups for support and endorsement of this very worthy and important cause.  Please see our website for further information about the history and specifics of the program - and also to sign our petition! - http://www.globalhealthservicecorps.org/index.php/petition. 

We are incredibly excited for potential of this program to have a meaningful impact on health and development around the world and look forward to your support.  Please disseminate our website and petition to your members. 

Thank you,
Sara Auld  and Vanessa Kerry