Resources

Esophageal cancer is
endemic in parts of the developing world. Medical missionaries have made important contributions to our understanding of this disease. This session will consider the causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of esophageal cancer in resource-limited settings, and the story of esophageal cancer research at Tenwek Hospital.

Diarrhea is a common problem and a leading cause of global pediatric mortality. This session presents effective clinical approaches to acute and chronic diarrhea in resource-limited settings.

Why should you do an international rotation while in training? Do you know? What are the advantages to you
for your training and future? Can God really use you as a student? How do you prepare for His working through you? How do you find the place(s) to do an overseas rotation? How do you get the clinical and procedural experience you desire? What do you need to take? Where can you find the money? How can you be sure your school will give you credit? What should you do ahead of time so your life will be forever changed? How can you impact other lives in the greatest way? This session will give practical answers to these and many other nuts and bolts questions that will get you started down the path to a meaningful, life-changing overseas rotation!

Medical missions planners often struggle with how
to have long-term impact from short-term missions. While local capacity building in medical education and community development seem to lead to the best sustainable change, these efforts may take decades of commitment and often require a well- funded multidisciplinary team that engages across government and private sectors. This session will discuss opportunities and challenges associated with using curative short-term missions to open doors for more effective, long-term change.

Much time and money is put into international medical missions every year, yet many efforts appear to be coming up short. Team members voice complaints that trips seemed to be little more than a vacation; dangerous issues of dependency of the host develop, and little long-term change is evident. Effective planning and organizing short-term medical missions can reduce the likelihood of such negative outcomes. This session will discuss mechanisms to plan for, prioritize, and measure desired actions and outcomes.

While many doors for medical mission have closed over
the past generation, many new ones have opened. Also, medical mission is no longer a Western thing. A new breed of medical missionaries is passionate to use their medical expertise to reach unreached people groups. Join us to explore these developments and get to know doctors and nurses at the cutting edge of medical mission today.

The New Testament gives
not one but several models for doing missions. New Testament models of missions are far more flexible and less narrowly defined than the way we typically think of missions. The usual conception of a missionary as one who follows a “call” to go abroad is just one facet of missions. In this session we will explore the biblical patterns and trajectories of what it means to do missions—at home and abroad—and discover what the Bible has to say to us about being “missional” in the 21st Century.

Health for All by the Year 2000 was the goal of the Alma Ata Declaration in 1978. The authors, many of them Christians, hoped to achieve access to basic healthcare for all people using a community health development approach. Yet more than 30 years later the concept languishes. What have we learned during the past 30 years that might restore the goal?

Approximately 25% of the world’s population is infected with intestinal helminths. These neglected tropical diseases greatly impact the world’s least privileged and most vulnerable populations, especially children and those living in extreme poverty. We will review the global burden of these individual parasites, their life cycles, clinical presentations, and treatment.

Approximately 25% of the world’s population is infected with intestinal helminths. These neglected tropical diseases greatly impact the world’s least privileged and most vulnerable populations, especially children and those living in extreme poverty. We will review the global burden of these individual parasites, their life cycles, clinical presentations, and treatment.

Traveling with children to distant lands for long-term mission assignments is rewarding and fun, but usually comes with some challenges. This session will discuss pre-trip health maintenance recommendations with regards to routine and travel-specific vaccinations and malaria prevention in children. In addition, there will be emphasis on safety measures to help prevent general injury and illness in the young traveler.