Massachusetts: New Boston-Based Peace Corps Partnership to Place Doctors, Nurses in Developing Countries

The head of Boston-based Global Health Services Corps recently announced a new partnership with the Peace Corps and the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. Under the effort, nurses, doctors, and other health personnel will be placed as adjunct faculty in overseas medical and nursing schools, said Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, GHSC's executive director and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

Working with MGH's Center for Global Health, the partnership will begin developing the educational components this summer, said Kerry, whose father is Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). "Global health, and a campaign for health equity, has captured our collective generation," she said. "We know things can and should be different."

"Health systems in developing countries suffer from major shortages of health personnel, limiting their ability to deliver even basic health care, let alone respond to growing and emerging epidemics," Kerry said. To counter a shortage of medical personnel in countries devastated by HIV/AIDS, the program is expected to debut in Tanzania, Malawi and Uganda in July 2013.

To encourage participation by US health personnel, eligible volunteers will receive student loan repayment stipends for every year served. Successful volunteers can choose to extend their one-year assignments in the Peace Corps' Response Program for an additional year. Volunteers in the partnership will earn Peace Corps benefits: monthly living stipends, transportation to and from their assigned country, medical coverage, readjustment allowances, and personal time off.

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