Intensive Training

International leaders come together to learn how to deliver on the promise of global health

Providers must overcome many obstacles to deliver care where it is needed. Image: Last Mile Health

Delivering effective interventions to patients who need them remains one of the greatest hurdles facing medicine and public health, despite significant global health resources and many known solutions. The Global Health Delivery Project at Harvard (GHD) brings together and trains ministry leaders, care providers, educators, researchers, and students to bridge that gap.

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Participants in the project’s Global Health Delivery Summer Intensive (GHDI) program spend three weeks at Harvard in July, enrolling in three courses that take place at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, where they learn how to understand epidemiology and manage programs to strengthen health systems and delivery structures.

These three courses are also part of a separate Master of Medical Sciences in Global Health Delivery (MMSc-GHD) degree-program offered through Harvard Medical School.

GHD is a joint initiative of Harvard Medical School, Harvard Business School, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital launched eight years ago by current World Bank President Jim Kim, Partners In Health co-founder and Kolokotrones University Professor Paul Farmer, and Michael Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at the Harvard Business School. GHD welcomed 52 mid-career global health professionals from 27 countries to this summer’s intensive training session.

The goal of the program is to improve how care is delivered and health organizations are managed around the world.

“We’ve recognized for years that transnational inequities in health are explained not by a lack of solutions to prevent and treat disease, but by the failure to deliver them to those in greatest need,” said Farmer, who is also and head of the HMS Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

“Improving health care delivery requires training new leaders in the complex work of implementation. GHDI is doing just that, and will continue to do so for professionals around the world.”

"At the World Bank, we realize that one of the most pressing issues to solve is global health delivery,” Kim said. “It's a fundamental problem in development, and GHDI seeks to address the delivery issue from different angles. I'm moved and inspired by how the program has taken off. It was just a dream when it started, and it's incredible to have expanded to three courses and a cohort of more than 50 students.”

Since 2009 the program has trained more than 250 practitioners who make real world impact. This year’s cohort includes:

  • Maxi Raymonville, executive director of the University Hospital in Mirebalais, Haiti
  • Ntombifuthi Dennis, prevention manager for Swaziland’s National AIDS Council
  • Vera Mussah, program manager for performance-based financing for the Liberian Ministry of Health

David Golan, HMS dean for basic science and graduate education, notes, “The students who enroll in GHDI are an impressive group of leaders. They come to Harvard to learn, but they also bring a wealth of experience and knowledge and invariably teach one another, building enduring collaborative relationships. Their passion and dedication to improving health throughout the world is palpable.”

Alumni include:

  • Nicholas Muraguri (2011), head of Kenya’s national AIDS commission at the time, later director of an international effort to eliminate HIV among children, and now the director of medical services for Kenya
  • Lorenzo Dorr (2012), senior program manager at Last Mile Health, a key leader in Liberia’s Ebola outbreak
  • Benjamin Grant (2014), another senior program manager at Last Mile Health, who oversaw Ebola preparedness trainings across one of the country’s 15 counties

Dorr and Grant acknowledge GHDI as a “great opportunity for senior level management training” that helped them with the outbreak response.


“We know so much that could help so many, but making sure the right people have that knowledge and can implement it is critical to improving care,” said Rebecca Weintraub, Faculty Director of the GHD and HMS assistant professor of global health and social medicine. Weintraub is also co-director of the GHDI along with Joseph Rhatigan, HMS associate professor of global health and social medicine.

This story is adapted from a GHD news release.