Humanitarian Intervention Consortium Concept Paper

Consortium for Humanitarian Intervention “…because we can do more together” Chris E. Stout, PsyD and Tiffany Masson, PsyD Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Context This document is meant to serve as an introduction to this nascent concept and as a conversation starter. We offer it in the context of gaining your feedback, opinions and ideas.

Introduction While much of the content herein has been deeply considered and thought-out, it is nevertheless open to others’ ideas, augmentation and editing in order to finally represent a synthetic document and plan to move forward.

We also wish to personally note our excitement in the potential of this Consortium, with the added benefit of being able to work with a collection of impressive individuals and remarkable institutions.

The Consortium will be the first such entity of its kind devoted to bringing together multidisciplinary professionals as well as students to work collaboratively in an integrated and sustainable fashion. It will represent a collaborative of medical schools, graduate schools, schools of public health and other institutions of higher learning with non-governmental organizations and in-country partners.

Participants generally focus on the complex issues involved in community crises, healthcare inequities, humanitarian emergencies and/or relief situations. All activities will be grounded in science/evidence-based practice models and best practices in culturally diverse communities with public accountability and transparency.

Infrastructure Starter Our working title for this entity is the Consortium for Humanitarian Intervention. The name was available for service-marking and the URL is likewise available at this time. Herein we will refer to the entity as the Consortium. We also have a FB group at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ConsortiumForHumanitarianIntervention The Problem Healthcare services, sciences, systems, education, and research all suffer from disconnections— globally and locally, biologically and behaviorally, in training and in practice, and health inequities are global in scale. However, it is the philosophy of the Consortium that the optimal way of successfully addressing these injustices is by multiple, small scale projects with a coordinated focus and outcome accountability.

The Solution Until now, there has not been a truly integrated Consortium that is at once mindful of all the complex aspects of global health inequities while also focused on small, outcomes oriented projects that is agile, responsive, improvisational and empowering in academic, clinical, training, and research domains.

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The Mission The Consortium will reach across disciplines and international borders to bring together partners to provide education, training and research programs that cross-cut with primary care, behavioral healthcare, and public healthcare services within a contest of social justice that addresses health inequalities. We seek to eschew the many disconnects between separation of body/mind, physical/mental, individual/community, and offer a synthetic model of integration. The causal role of behavior in health is too often ignored, resulting in vicious spirals of illness. We see ourselves as being members of a global community of hope, focusing on inherent strengths, and augmenting recovery and resilience.

The Goals • Advance the education and performance of local and international professionals and students in health-related fields to meet the challenges of health inequalities and humanitarian interventions; • Maintain a philosophy and approach as that of a collaborator and colleague; • Augment inherent strengths and resilience; • Improve preparedness for reacting to manmade and natural disasters and their aftermath; • Strengthen collaboration as well as the sharing of experience and knowledge among various stakeholders in global health inequities (primary care, behavioral healthcare, and public health); • Improve people's lives by decreasing premature death and disability with a special focus on the underserved, refugee and immigrant populations’ needs; • Provide clinical services; • Augment existing medical, psychological, and science education, research, and service capacity (including health education); • Build capacity of local communities to improve health and healthcare access; • Motivate the public and private sectors to drive consensus and action for the improvement of health globally and to influence relevant policy; • Fold in issues of behavioral health, violence, and prevention as public health concerns; • Integrate ALL the health sciences and services with policy and advocacy at both the governmental and non-governmental levels in order to create subsequent funding methods and sources, capacity building, and sustainable development.

Consortium Model No preexisting program will need to alter its offerings, curricula, courses or syllabi. Instead, membership in the Consortium allows for easier and more rapid access to potential collaborators to partner on grants, research, publishing, international training experiences or service opportunities. The Consortium will be both a proverbial (albeit virtual) think-tank offering unfettered communication with fellow Consortium colleagues who otherwise may have been unknown without participation in the Consortium.

In academic settings, members could serve as content experts, collaborators, coauthors, guest lecturers, dissertation readers, or visiting scholars. In applied settings members could serve as consultants, content experts, mentors, or project partners. Membership or participation with the Consortium would not be restrictive in any way to a member’s activities; quite to the contrary, it should supplement, enhance and accelerate everyone’s work and reach.

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Building a Collective Knowledge Network and Use the Tools of Academia The Consortium will work to build partnerships, create opportunities, and facilitate the open exchange of ideas, experience, and knowledge–not only between students and faculty in psychology, primary care medicine, behavioral healthcare, policy, and public health, but also between academic institutions, non governmental organizations, and government agencies, here and abroad. We then will use existing academic tools or develop new ones to meet those needs.

Linking Interdisciplinary Education Research and Practice The forces that create and intensify global health threats will be complex and their roots will be biological, social, political, economic, environmental, ethical, and cultural in nature. Medicine must reach beyond the traditional definition of health and disease, and integrate the vast experience accumulated by practitioners in other fields; this will be one of the Consortium’s key strengths.

Systematically Measuring Performance and Outcomes to Improve Impact The Consortium will use a variety of methods and perspectives to regularly assess and report progress towards achieving our goal of effective global health training and education. On-going evaluation will also help identify gaps and opportunities as well as improve our teaching, research, and practice methodologies and approaches.

Joining Forces to meet the Challenges of Global Health Inequities and Humanitarian Intervention The Consortium will be developed by professionals with diverse backgrounds, extensive academic training, and many years of practical experience in local and international health issues. Possible programs would be developed in collaboration with other graduate schools and programs, medical schools, and colleagues in Chicago, nationally, and abroad. Its planned affiliations with world-renowned institutions offers unique opportunities in providing care to ethnically, culturally, and socio-economically diverse populations around the world.

Fragmentation and lack of information sharing among stakeholders in health and humanitarian intervention around the world limits the development of adequate responses to global health challenges. These stakeholders include academic and business communities, health practitioners around the globe, national and international health agencies, policy makers, community advocates, funding sources, grassroots and humanitarian organizations, and governments.

The objective is to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, pool resources and integrate methodologies and perspectives from other disciplines, institutions, and countries. Here are a few partnering organizations that may compose the nascent Consortium: Academic International Psychology Program, The Chicago School (lead organization, confirmed) University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Medicine, Center for Global Health (confirmed) University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health (in discussion)

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University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Medicine, Dept of Psychiatry, International Center on Responses to Catastrophes Harvard Humanitarian Initiative School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute (in discussion) Purdue School of Engineering’s “Dr. Chris Stout RISE Scholarship” (Research, International study abroad, Service learning, Experiential learning) (confirmed) University of Denver International Disaster Psychology Program Social Health Care Training and Treatment Program (Jordan) (confirmed) Office of Global Affairs, Adler School (confirmed) Loyola University College of William and Mary George Mason University (in discussion) Drexel University University of Missouri International Trauma Studies Program, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University Center for Health and HIV Intervention and Prevention @ UConn Department of CBN and Anatomy, Loyola University Medical College Global NGO The United Nations ATI MissionWorks (confirmed) Flying Doctors of America (confirmed) CURE Initiative, Nigeria (confirmed) GEANCO (in discussion) Project Cure (in discussion) Common Bond Institute (confirmed) Assoc. for Women’s Promotion and Endogenous Development, Democratic Republic of Congo (confirmed) Global Dental Relief (in discussion) Project Hope (in discussion) Range of Motion Project (in discussion) Service Research and Innovation Institute (in discussion) Medicines Sans Frontiers Kovler Center A Leg To Stand On Jamkhed (aka Comprehensive Rural Health Project –CRHP) Institute for One World Health Sustainable Sciences Institute HARAMBEE Center for Global Initiatives (lead partner organization, confirmed) Professional Division 52, International Psychology Psychologists for Social Responsibility

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APA, Committee on International Relations in Psychology National Arab- American Medical Association (NAAMA) Syrian American Medical Society ACCESS British Arab Psychiatrists Association World Council for Psychotherapy European Association of Psychotherapy Potential Deliverables Lives saved Lives improved New funding streams and mechanisms New innovations Service to others via systems construction Service to others via direct clinical services Elective credits for students Workshops with CMEs/CEs/CUs for licensed professionals Optional international mission experiences Lectures Series Topical Film Series and Discussion Journal Club Digital Library Fellowships International Proficiency Development for US Based Students/Professionals Healthcare and Systems Proficiency Development for International Students/ Professionals Certification/Diploma Internship/Post-Doc for graduate clinical psychology White Papers/Position Papers Peer Reviewed Publications Books, book chapters The Consortium’s Ethos The Consortium’s Ethos will reflect the interdisciplinary nature of public health, primary care, and behavioral healthcare within a context of humanitarian intervention and social justice addressing global health inequities, and the realities of fieldwork as well as coursework. Components of this include: Interdisciplinary. The Consortium will always be collaborative with more than two dozen representatives from various professional backgrounds and organizations.

Responsive to real needs. The Consortium will assess the needs of communities served by international agencies and community-based organizations, and determine what competencies health providers need and which teaching methodologies will be most

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effective. Ongoing feedback from faculty, participants, and community-based organizations ensure the Consortium is achieving its goals and targeted outcomes.

Link theory and practice. The Consortium will focus on “training how” rather than “teaching what.” Faculty members will employ a highly participatory approach and addressing the experiences and needs of participants. They will link lessons closely to clinical fieldwork, collaborative global health research, and other fieldwork in which participants may be engaged.

Foster research. Through our collaboration with other academic, government, and communitybased partners in immigrant communities in the U.S and their countries of origin, we offer a unique opportunity to conduct interdisciplinary multi-country comparative research, and all projects will be evaluated for outcome efficacy and impact.

Translate research into practice. We will incorporate the latest research on global health into our curriculum, so these findings can quickly be put into practice in communities both local and indigenous. Research findings will also help to develop strategies to improve response to global health challenges. Such findings will be published in peer reviewed journals, websites, white papers, and books. Data will be accessible to other researchers as well.

Flexible. The Consortium will work to be always adaptive to meet the needs of advanced degree students or practicing professionals as well as those they work with.

Training Model: International and Local The model for providing services will generally be: 1) Early identification of and consensus on needs and deliverables; 2) Training and education of local practitioners as well as international practitioners for practice development, creation and expansion of training facilities and methods (including telehealth) for locally trained specialists; 3) Find and create alliances and collaboratives with locals, NGOs, government, schools/universities for collaboration and funding; 4) Gain mutual agreement as to curriculum, methods of instruction and concomitant needs along with budget to accomplish goals; 5) Determine teaching method(s) – web-based, local, clinic model, mentor, etc.; 6) Recruit faculty, supervisors, and mentors to design and execute curriculum; 7) Evaluate outcomes, course-correct as need be, leave, publish findings; 8) Consult afterwards, PRN. Intervention Model: International and Local The model for providing services will generally be: 1) Early identification of and consensus on needs and deliverables, and establish budget; 2) Find and create alliances and collaboratives with locals, NGOs, government, schools/universities for collaboration and funding; 3) Provide Treatment and Prevention Services (including medication, psychosocial,

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education, etc.); 4) Develop or augment healthcare delivery system including labs, drug supplies, training, surveillance, pubic health, behavioral health, primary care services; 5) Evaluate outcomes, course-correct as need be, leave, publish findings; 6) Consult afterwards, PRN. Memorandum of Understanding/Agreement We have drafted language for Memoranda of Understandings/Agreements to establish your participation in the Consortium. Should an institution have their own, we can look to use it instead. The Consortium at the very least would provide an easy to access virtual community of likeminded, albeit diverse individuals, the opportunity for open and direct information exchange and discussion of common issues and interests as well as opportunities for collaborations and sharing of resources. The Consortium members via an agreement such as the Memorandum would then have formalized these contacts via an articulation of mutual goals of the members and agreement to regularly communicate and consider the development of joint activities. Membership in the Consortium would provide a more public affirmation of this interassociation goodwill and collaborative opportunities. In general: 1. Purpose. By joining the Consortium, members agree to engage in the following activities relevant to the scientific and social needs of the countries in which Consortium members are working, which may include but is not limited to providing long-term education and training opportunities, developing and participating in joint research activities, seeking joint funding to support the Consortium’s objectives, and exchanging academic publications and scholarly information.

2. Duration of Membership Agreement. The membership agreement shall be in effect for a period of five (5) calendar years from the Effective Date of the Agreement. The Effective Date of the Agreement is the date of the last member’s entry into the Consortium. Upon conclusion of the initial five-year membership period, membership in the Consortium may be renewed upon written notice of intent signed by the parties.

3. Termination of Membership. Membership in the Consortium may be terminated upon 90 calendar day’s written notice to the Consortium. If the terminating party is engaged in any ongoing activities of the Consortium, the member and the Consortium will enter into a termination agreement to delineate the responsibilities of each party in terminating the relationship.

4. Consortium Management. Development and implementation of Consortium activities, and reporting regarding the progress of Consortium activities shall be jointly decided and carried out by the Consortium and representatives for each of its members.

5. Consortium Activities. Each specific activity undertaken on behalf of the Consortium and any individual member(s) shall be mutually discussed and agreed upon in a separate written agreement, signed by the parties prior to the start of such activity.

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6. Financial and Operational Responsibilities. Each member of the Consortium is fully responsible, both financially and operationally for the acts and omissions of its own employees who participate in Consortium activities.

7. Arbitration. Any dispute, controversy or claim arising out of or relating to the Agreement, or the breach, termination or invalidity thereof, shall be settled by arbitration in accordance with the International Center for Dispute Resolution’s (ICDR) international arbitration rules.

Arbitration rules in force at the time of the arbitration and judgment upon the award rendered pursuant to such arbitration may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof.

8. Governing Law. The Agreement shall be construed, interpreted, enforced and governed by and under the laws of the State of Illinois. Exclusive jurisdiction and venue of any actions arising out of, or relating to or in any way connected with this Agreement shall be in Cook County, Illinois.

We are happy to further discuss any of the terms described above, should you have any questions or concerns, as the terms are meant to serve as an overview of the purpose and function of the Consortium.

Grant Funded Symposium To start things off, we envision a grant funded private meeting of members along with public presentations from the members as well. We are thinking of something TEDx-like that would be informational, inspirational and compelling. Afterward we plan to post select talks on YouTube and elsewhere, and publish the proceedings of the talks.

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