Evaluating the impact of a 15‐year academic partnership to promote sustainable engagement, education, and scholarship in global health

Abstract

IntroductionIn 2003, Purdue University College of Pharmacy (PUCOP) in West Lafayette, Indiana, began the Purdue Kenya Partnership (PKP) in collaboration with the Academic Model Providing Access to Healthcare, Moi University, and Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, in Eldoret, Kenya. PUCOP's involvement utilized a tripartite approach of engagement, education, and scholarship to provide and expand sustainable access to high quality care.ObjectiveThis paper discusses outcomes and impacts of this academic partnership.MethodsPurdue Kenya Partnership's progress in achieving its stated mission was evaluated using an outcome‐approach logic model. This model highlighted inputs, activities, and results which encompassed outputs, outcomes, and impact. A comprehensive set of ratios were calculated to quantify annual change in PKP investments against estimated metrics for engagement, education, and scholarship. These metrics were weighted by involvement level and pharmacist effort in various clinical domains. Descriptive statistics were completed that identified cumulative and totals per year for each collected data type of data collected.ResultsPurdue Kenya Partnership implementation utilized initial inputs of human resources, financial capital, and strategic partnerships. These inputs supported pharmacy involvement in 16 distinct care programs in both inpatient and outpatient settings which supported the care of 457 833 individual patients and grown a clinical pharmacy staff from 0 to 22 practicing clinical pharmacists. Five unique educational programs have been established which have graduated 457 trainees. Purdue Kenya Partnership has generated over $6.2 million in grant funding and disseminated 302 peer reviewed manuscripts, posters, and oral presentations combined. Ratios describing trends in engagement, education, and scholarship as a result of using the locally focused PKP approach highlight higher initial costs compared with much lower costs per outcome several years into the partnership.ConclusionThe PKP's global health approach of prioritizing the population's care needs (“leading with care”) has enabled the development of sustainable engagement, education, and scholarship infrastructure with significant gains in all three domains.

Global service learning: A unique educational pathway for community engagement and student scholarship development

“…PKP has worked to mentor students in research and scholarship as additional outcomes of service learning community partnerships. This fits multiple purposes, the first is PKP's mission to disseminate best practices 15 . This also benefits the community partners by highlighting their programs which can lead to additional funding and support.…”

“…AMPATH is a consortium of North American universities led by the Indiana University School of Medicine which collaborates with Kenyan universities, health systems, and local county based ministries of health to provide high‐quality, sustainable care to a catchment population of over 20 million people in western Kenya 14 . Similar to AMPATH's emphasis on leading with care and then layering on teaching and research, PKP utilizes a tripartite approach of engagement, education, and scholarship to advance activities on the ground 15,16 . PUCOP employees two full time faculty members that live and work within Kenya along with two additional faculty members that are based in the United States and assist with student preparation along with assisting in all educational programming development and maintenance.…”

Characteristics of Successful International Pharmacy Partnerships

“…Interviewers discussed the need for cultural and structural sensitivity to avoid using a high-income country lens to look at local needs-based interventions rather than looking to partners for their feedback on the work of students in non-US settings. Examples of long-term, sustainable global partnerships focused on local needs-based care, have demonstrated improvements in patient outcomes and enhancing workforce training [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. In Zimbabwe, a focus on HIV clinical pharmacology and post-doctoral training programs has improved research training, optimization of antiretroviral use, and development of national treatment guidelines [ 14 , 15 ].…”

Pivoting an international experience preparation course during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Purdue University College of Pharmacy offers international Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) in three countries (Kenya, United Kingdom [London and Wales] and Colombia) (Weatherman et al, 2019;Karwa et al, 2020). Each of these experiences offers students a unique learning opportunity that augments their United States-based APPEs.…”