Health Reform and Community Medicine

Every year, Professor Tom Bossert teaches and directs a three week-long Winter Term Course for 15 HSPH graduate students in Santiago, Chile, in collaboration with the DRCLAS Regional Office. The program started in 2003, and continues every consecutive year during January. 

The Winter Term Course in Chile is designed to allow students to see first hand major current public health issues in a remarkable and exciting period of innovation in Chile: the process of reforming health systems and innovations in community medicine approaches, including the assessment of social capital initiatives.

During the course students are engaged in daily lectures along with visits with important representatives in the Chilean health care system to better understand community medicine and social capital. Complementing this program, students get involved in a research project to assess the role of social capital in health care services and health status.

The course is designed by Professor Thomas Bossert, Ph.D. Department of Population and International Health with the support of MPH graduates from HSPH (Jaime Sapag, Miguel Navarro, Marco Nuñez, Jorge Jiménez, María Inés Romero) and from current and former health officials in Chile. Logistical support for the program is provided by Harvard’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Regional Office in Santiago.