Boston Global Surgery Symposium: Inspiring the Next Generation of Global Surgeons

COM_students at surg event

On Saturday March 4, students, residents and physicians from across the northeast attended the inaugural Boston Global Surgery Symposium.  The event was hosted by the national board of the Global Surgery Student Alliance (GSSA), a group of medical students and residents from BUSM, Harvard Medical School and T.H. Chan School of Public Health.  The conference was attended by 200 students and residents, health researchers from the United Nations, and live-streamed by over 19,000 people from 37 different countries.

John Meara, DMD, MD, the Kletjian Professor of Global Surgery, Harvard Medical School and the Chair of the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, was the opening keynote speaker.  He addressed the commission’s efforts to increase surgical care worldwide by focusing on infrastructure, workforce, service delivery, finances, and information management.   Meara emphasized how critical it was for students to become involved in global surgery as they “are the future.”

The keynote was followed by 16 panel sessions led by global surgery leaders with specialties ranging from trauma surgery to neurosurgery.  The panelists focused on a variety of topics including education and capacity building; crisis and humanitarian aid; and with subspecialties in global surgery, global surgery research, and innovation in global surgery.  The symposium concluded with a combined session on how students could make their surgical careers globally impactful.

COM_surg event

The symposium and the GSSA have catalyzed awareness of global surgery and its importance to students in the U.S.  Since its inception, the alliance has prompted more than 15 other schools to begin creating their own global surgery teams.  The symposium acts as the alliance’s first of many efforts that will have a positive and lasting impact on global surgery.  It hopes to equip students with the knowledge, resources and connections necessary to have careers in surgery that are not bound by borders.

The Global Surgery Student Alliance is the national student global surgery working group for the U.S. It is led by a team of students and residents. Their next steps include increasing national outreach to more medical schools across the U.S. and working with interested students, while also partnering with surgical and global health organizations across the U.S. They aim to create tools that will help students create and maintain global surgery working groups at their respective schools, as well as encouraging student action within global surgery around the country. They are also creating a database of global surgery contacts for students.

To learn more about the Global Surgery Student Alliance and to access the recorded talks from the Boston Global Surgery Symposium, you can go to their website or send email.

Submitted by Roya Edalatpour, BUSM ‘20