Health Systems

Program Coordinator: Pankhuri Sharma
Contact us: [email protected]

Find out more

Focus Areas

Primary health care from a health system perspective

Immersion in public health in cities with the worst HDI in Brazil

The main goal of the activity is to integrate the national interchange of IFMSA Brazil with public health by a immersion of the medical student in the reality of health systems in places with a low HD in state of Maranhão in BraziI. With the partnership with FESMA ( Health State Force of Maranhão), this activity aims to improve the education between the population that don’t have access to information about health and how to prevent diseases, by making activities in the health promotion in more away cities. At the same time, the activity also aim to teach students how to act as doctors in difficult situations, where it is not possible to find the right material to many procedures. 

In this way the target group of this activity is the population of Maranhão, Brazil, and the indicators of success are related to the report of these about the attendance and the improve of the service given to them when they need. At  the same time it is important to evaluate the opinion of the medical students about the activity to see if it was good to the both sides. Only evaluating the opinions of the students about the experience and the improve of the service after the beginning of the interchange is possible to see if the activity was a success or not.

Medicine related issues

Activities focusing on access to medicines.

Global surgery

Example: A seminar with doctors working on global surgery, which is covering the important aspects of it and real life experiences

Rural/community health

Balkan SCOPH Weekend 4:

People living in rural area don’t have as good access to medical care as people living in urban areas. Also, both children and elderly population are less involved in health system, the main reasons being insufficient education, mistrust in the system and sparse medical services. Aim of this project is to target specific problems that are linked with living in rural regions. Objectives are:Acknowledge the gap between healthcare in urban and rural population Find common problems shared with the neighbouring countries and work toward solving them through small working groups

Work on improvement of mental health, especially among younger populationConsider actions toward reducing the prevalence of NCDs, focusing on how to lower the percentage of smoking cigarettes and consummation of alcoholIndicator of success for all is greater number of high quality, rural health oriented activities in each NMO and, consequently, better community healthcare for rural population

Universal Health Coverage

World Health Day 2018 Campaign

Our health system is full of inequalities revolving around several issues:

  1. medical care of people with disabilities
  2. lack of adequate care for extreme ages
  3. geographic inequalities (oversea territories +++)
  4. social and financial limitations to access healthcare
  5. cultural and linguistic barriers
  6. SOGI

The objectives are of two types:

  1. raising awareness about the issues we are highlighting.
  2. promoting innovative solutions to address these issues.

Indicators of success will be the application of the solutions we promote, especially the ones regarding medical training.

Trade and Health

Activities focusing on impact of trade agreements for the health of the population.

E-Health

Examples: A summer school on the new opportunities and “problems” that big data will play in patient management

Health Systems as a whole

SPECTRUM

As a science magazine, is based on writing articles according to the respective call. It aims at leading to the development of the point of view of medical students as future professionals and citizens of the country – Ecuador – and the world. All of this, about specific issues, as for example: Tuberculosis, ADIS/HIV, Multiple Sclerosis, OCPD, and others. General objective:To generate knowledge about important issues in Medicine and Surgery career and in general society, by writing and publishing articles that cover topics related to medical education and health systems, this, for the duration of the activity and its monthly publication, and the participation of authors and readers that in number (as a minimum) correspond to 10 and 60 people, respectively.

Specific objectives:

  1. To encourage a writing culture within the medical community through the respective call, via online. (Indicator, minimum 10 people for each edition.)
  2. To raise-awareness among medical students and general society about the importance of disseminating science through social networks and other media, publication of opinions. (Indicator, minimum 3 people for every two editions.)
  3. To know the impact generated by the project through the application of questionnaires. (Indicator, 50 per cent of the participants –authors and readers –for each edition.)

Health System Innovation

Assistant Doctors Project

The project aims to address the problem, that medical students do not have a lot of opportunities to do practical work during their studies. Before this project, our students could only work in hospitals as assistant nurses, which is not enough for acquiring practical skills. The other issue this project aims to tackle, is the lack of workforce in hospitals during the summer.

  1. The system is working –by the summer of 2011 the government has passed a law that allows the first assistant doctors to work in Estonian hospitals (achieved 16.12.2016).
  2. Working as an assistant doctor is a natural part of becoming a doctor in Estonia – by 2020 60% of the final year medical students will have worked as assistant doctors, by 2020 90% of assistant doctors have worked in a healthcare facility in Estonia.
  3. The system is efficient – by 2018 a law has been passed that allows assistant doctors to have access to our e-Health system and can write preliminary prescriptions from their own information system account (achieved 03.03.2017).
  4. The system is sustainable – by 2020 the system has funding from the government.
  5. The system gets positive feedback from both students and employers – every year at least 70% of students and healthcare facilities rate satisfaction with the system at least 4 or higher (on a 5 step scale).

Health Systems Database

The Health Systems Database includes the health system profiles of 140 IFMSA NMOs in 130 countries to strengthen knowledge of IFMSA exchanges and members about health systems around the globe.

Human Resources for Health

Awareness campaigns and community-focused activities and Advocacy efforts aimed at major stakeholders in order to recognize health workforce planning as a national and global priority.

Organ, Stem-cells and Tissue donation

Awareness campaign on blood donation, blood collection events, events to register organ o stem-cells donors, training for healthcare professionals on donation.

proposal

Program Proposal

To find our more about the current Program, check the Program Proposal document.

Activities for Health Systems Program

Below you may find all the most recent activities that were recognized as part of the Activities for Health Systems Program.

If you are interested to join IFMSA Program with your activity and have it shown in the Database please visit the IFMSA Programs part of the website and/or contact the program team at [email protected].

NrProgramEnrollment yearActivityCategoryRegionNMOStanding CommitteeType