How to Get Involved

Projects Sites and Mentors

Sierra Leone: Anjan Saha, MD, PhD (as6502@cumc.columbia.edu)
Capacity building, health policy, supply chains

Guyana: Richard Raker, MD (rkr1@cumc.columbia.edu)
Capacity building, program development

Vietnam: Jordan Francke, MD, MPH (jf3767@cumc.columbia.edu)
Simulation, education, cross-institutional exchange

Nigeria and Haiti, et al: Anthony Habib, MD (ah3071@cumc.columbia.edu)
Global congenital cardiothoracic surgery

For Residents and Fellows at CUIMC

Society for Education in Anesthesia (SEA) and Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) Traveling Fellowship

For CA-3 anesthesia residents: spend four weeks teaching and learning at an HVO anesthesia education site in a low-resource setting. Applications open as of October 15th, 2025, and must be submitted by January 26th, 2026. For more information, visit the website: Society for Education in Anesthesia and Health Volunteers Overseas

Society for Obstetric Anesthesiology and Perinatology (SOAP) International Outreach Award

The SOAP Kybele International Outreach Award supports anesthesiologists and teams launching global health initiatives aimed at improving safe obstetric and anesthesia care in resource-limited settings. This grant provides funding and recognition for projects that promote sustainable partnerships and measurable impact in maternal and newborn health worldwide.

American Society of Anesthesiologists Global Health Overseas (ASA-GHO) Training Program

Programs in Guyana and Rwanda are active now; send a CV and letter of interest:

For Guyana: Dr. Reema Sanghvi, rsanghvi@health.ucsd.edu

For Rwanda: Dr. Shyamal Asher, shyamal_asher@brown.edu

For more information, visit the website: American Society of Anesthesiologists Global Health Overseas (ASA-GHO) Training Program

For Residents: include Anjan Saha, Richard Raker, and Teresa Mulaikal in correspondence

For Fellows: include Anjan Saha, Richard Raker in correspondence

For Medical Students at VP&S

Columbia VP&S medical students can engage in global health projects in anesthesiology by pairing departmental mentors with institution-wide structures. Through the Program for Education in Global and Population Health (Global Pop), students can undertake summer projects, Scholarly Projects, research years, or an MD/MS focused on global and population health with CUIMC-based anesthesiology mentors in international or domestic low-resource settings. Funding and protected time can be layered from multiple sources, including the Varmus Global Scholars Fund for transformative, faculty-mentored global research abroad, NIH-linked summer research mechanisms such as the VP&S Summer Research Program (T35) or anesthesia-focused fellowships, and internal Scholarly Project/Friedman-style awards to support travel, data collection, and dissemination. In practice, students join ongoing departmental initiatives—such as perioperative capacity-building, maternal health, or implementation science projects—then formalize these experiences as Global Pop-track Scholarly Projects or summer research, using these VP&S and external mechanisms to structure mentorship, coursework, and funding.

For Public Health Students at the Mailman School of Public Health

Mailman School of Public Health students can engage with anesthesiology-linked global health work by using the APEx practicum as a structured, credit-bearing field placement with global or domestic partners focused on perioperative, systems, or implementation challenges. Through APEx, MPH, MHA, and DrPH students from diverse departmental backgrounds (e.g., population and family health, epidemiology, environmental health, sociomedical sciences, health policy and management) can embed within anesthesiology-led projects or partner institutions to apply analytic, policy, or program-design skills to real-world global health problems. Nominal stipend mechanisms and APEx-specific funding streams—such as practicum stipends and fellowships that offset unpaid or international placements—can be combined with project-based support from anesthesiology or external global health partners to make these experiences financially feasible while advancing students’ professional networks and competency development.