Both osteopathic and allopathic medical schools have well-established IHEs.
24 One of the greatest milestones of medical school IHEs is their ability to influence young physicians to go into primary care professions, thereby meeting an important need of the US health care system.
31,32 The residency programs that foster global health interest through IHEs have also shown success in a number of areas.
3,4,10,12,33
Yale University's Internal Medicine Residency program started its first IHE site in Haiti in 1981.
34 Their program has been in existence for more than 3 decades and provides 4- to 6-week rotations for second- and third-year internal medicine residents. A retrospective survey study
10 showed that participants and nonparticipants of an IHE were equally likely to change their career plans. However, the 2 groups did differ when it came to the type of career change; those who participated in an IHE were 56% more likely to change their career choice from a subspecialty to general internal medicine compared with 31% of nonparticipants.
10 In addition, participants were more likely to practice in underserved settings and care for the poor.
10 Participants of the Mayo International Health Program demonstrated heightened cultural awareness, were exposed to diseases they might not have otherwise encountered, had increased awareness of cost, and gained improved history and physical examination skills.
3A survey by Miller et al
12 on the Duke University Medicine Residency International Health Program found that many new graduates from medical schools are seeking programs with established IHEs and that Duke University's IHE is beneficial to its residency program. Despite these positive institutional experiences, IHEs do not exist in all graduate training programs, and currently it is unclear how many exist among osteopathic GME programs.