Global & Rural Health
Preparing physicians for equitable care across rural Georgia & the world
The Medical College of Georgia Global & Rural Health Program brings together education, supervised experience, scholarship, and reciprocal partnerships to prepare learners to improve health in rural, underserved, and global communities. The program serves as the overarching home for global and rural health education across MCG, encompassing specialized pathways, courses, community initiatives, and faculty development.
Pathway Status Notice- The Global & Rural Health Pathway is currently completing the university approval process. Applications are not yet open, but interested learners are encouraged to review the proposed curriculum and check back for application dates.
Mission & Vision
Our Mission: To prepare medical students, residents, faculty, and health-system partners to advance health equity in rural, underserved, and global communities through rigorous education, ethical and reciprocal partnerships, community-engaged service, scholarly inquiry, public health, and systems-based leadership.
Our Vision: To become a nationally recognized, multi-campus program that develops humble, skilled, and accountable physician-leaders who improve health with communities in Georgia and globally through sustainable partnerships, bidirectional learning, and measurable impact.
Ways to Engage
Learners and partners can connect with the program through distinct focus areas. The Global & Rural Health Pathway offers a longitudinal curriculum integrating foundational instruction, rural clinical training, scholarship, and supervised global experiences. The Education track features standalone courses, lectures, workshops, and mentorship for practical skill development. The Experiences track offers structured opportunities across clinical, community, public health, and research environments. The Partnerships track establishes ethical, long-term collaborations with institutions and communities in Georgia and abroad.
Shared Competencies Across Distinct Communities
Rural Georgia and global partner communities each possess unique histories, health systems, resources, and priorities. However, practicing physicians across these settings rely on common core capabilities: understanding illness in context, adapting evidence-based care to available resources, navigating complex systems, communicating across cultures, and working through locally led partnerships.
The program structures its efforts around four guiding pillars:
Patient
Focuses on safe, evidence-informed care aligned with individual patient priorities & resource limitations
Place
Examines how geography, economics, policy, and environment shape population health
Pathway
Analyzes how care moves between clinics, hospitals, public health systems, and homes
Partnership
Centers on working with communities through shared priorities, reciprocity, & mutual accountability
Featured Educational Program
Health Beyond the Hospital: Rural Georgia, Global Lessons is a current educational pilot sponsored by the Harrison and Peach State Scholars series. Using the recurring case of Ms. Lena Carter and the fictional Pine County community, this eight-session series explores care delivery, health systems, ethics, digital health, and population health across rural and global settings.
Partnership Approach
Partnerships begin with listening. Rather than starting with student travel, collaborations are developed around partner-defined priorities, clear educational roles, safety, and mutual benefit. Prospective students, residents, faculty, and institutional partners can submit an initial intake inquiry to get connected with advising, courses, research, or partnership development.
News & Events
No news items exist for Global & Rural Health on Jagwire and no events are avialable in the Event Calendar.