International Travel Courses

Our international travel courses offer MCPHS students the best of both worlds—the opportunity to take elective courses on campus and then travel abroad to visit relevant sites during school breaks. Built into the curriculum, the required travel component enriches the practice experience by bringing on-campus learning to life as students engage in related fieldwork. Each faculty-led field placement also serves as a shorter-term and cost-effective entry point to education abroad.

This coming academic year, MCPHS is offering two new exciting elective courses:

• Global Perspectives in Nuclear Medicine, offered through the School of Medical Imaging and Therapeutics, will include site visits to Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Students will take part in clinical shadowing and observations at Royal North Shore Hospital. One of the highlights will be a visit to the OPAL reactor, one of eight worldwide locations that produces medical isotopes.
• Students will travel to London, England, U.K., for our Global Comparative Healthcare Seminar, which is offered through our new School of Healthcare Business. They will explore contemporary issues in healthcare delivery, health policy, and business as they visit hospitals and do comparative analysis of the U.S. health system versus the U.K.’s National Health Service.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for at MCPHS, our membership in the Colleges of the Fenway (COF) consortium also enables you to enroll in elective courses that include international travel during campus breaks. At Emmanuel, for instance, students can study biology in the spring and do fieldwork in the Galapagos Islands or cross-register in a Global Public Health course and travel to South Africa.

Field Placement Opportunities

“Global health is such a large piece of public health, and being able to see things firsthand in another country is so important. That’s why MCPHS’s Master of Public Health (MPH) program requires field experience as part of the curriculum,” says Carly Levy, Assistant Professor of Public Health and director of the MPH program.

Through Child Family Health International (CFHI), MCPHS sends students to Uganda, India, and Mexico for their public health field placement. The CFHI programs provide numerous opportunities for students to meet all 22 foundational competencies and five program competencies, and to become more marketable in their chosen fields.

Last summer, MPH students took part in a Nutrition, Food Security, and Sustainable Agriculture program in Kabale, Uganda, and in a Public Health Delivery Innovations and Community Medicine program in Delhi, India, where they were able to see the importance of cultural competency in public health interventions up close. Here’s what three students had to say about their placements abroad:

“Through immersion in another culture—and meaningful interactions with local healthcare workers and community members, the experience provided me with a deeper understanding of what purpose is being fulfilled through community-oriented public health efforts.”

“I was able to see how the different nonprofits in India work to promote health in a population that has so many different dialects and levels of literacy. That’s something that we’re taught about in class, but it’s very different to witness it firsthand.”

“Little did I know that in four short weeks I would fall in love with the people of Kabale, Uganda, and be returning from a life-changing experience that would pave the way for significant personal and professional development.”

Summer/Semester Abroad

Through our affiliations with universities across the globe, MCPHS students have the opportunity to study abroad and satisfy their various elective requirements.

We offer a wealth of international programs and enriching global experiences that enable students to spend a month or two in the summer or a full semester earning course credit at an educational institution overseas.