POLITICO: What a medical school on a Rwandan hilltop can teach the United States
“Three hours along a bumpy dirt road from the capital of Rwanda, a new medical school is emerging from the unlikeliest of places — a small hilltop in the poor farming village of Butaro. The school’s name reveals its ambitious mission: The University of Global Health Equity. It aims to transform both medical education and medical care for the rural poor in central Africa and to serve as a model for more equitable health care around the globe. … [I]ts emphasis on equity, fairness, and the social and economic factors that influence health holds more lessons than one might think for the United States — which spends $3.5 trillion a year on health care and still has one of the most unequal health systems in the world…” (Karlin-Smith, 1/27).