What is largely ignored in this discussion are the
changes in organizational structure and process that
have enabled universities to develop the necessary
organizational capabilities and the overall institutional
capcity to teach global health competencies to
their students. This is not just a matter of revising a
syllabus or offering a few new courses or repackaging
old ones. We need to ask ourselves how we can effectively
teach such wide-ranging domains of competencies
given the organizational structure of our modern
universities where education and research activities
continue to exist in silos defined by the reward structure
of individual departments and professions.
While there are notable examples of universities that
have created innovative organizational structures to
address these challenges,12 asymetries contine to exist
between highly-resourced universities with a strong
legacy in global health and the majority of univeristies
whose educational programs in global health are
less than a decade old.13 These organizational and
institutional challenges are even more evident within
the realm of the global health interprofessional competency
domain which focuses on the development of
interprofessional team competencies where the epistemic
world view of no single profession can be considered
privileged over another. Addressing this concern
requires new forms of organization within universities
that aim to be truly interprofessional. These challenges
require universities to undertake a process of
organizational learning, experimenting with new
educational strategies, structures and processes, and
developing those unique organizational capabilities
that are most appropriate for their particular context.