Global REACH
Research, Education and Collaboration in Health

About Us

Dr. James Woolliscroft, Dean, UMMS, visits with President Xie Shengwu at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Originally spearheaded by Dean, James O. Woolliscroft, MD, Global REACH had its genesis in the late 1990s with the Medical School Administration’s increasing interest in expanding the horizons of UMMS to include a more global perspective. Specifically, the Medical School was interested in enhancing opportunities for educational exchanges among students and faculty, facilitating international research collaborations, and providing opportunities for visiting scholars to benefit from the expertise available at the University of Michigan.

During the late 1990s and early 2000, several delegations of international visitors came to UMMS, and the development of formal Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with potential partner institutions began in 2001. In July of 2001, David T. Stern, MD, PhD, was appointed Director.

Why Global REACH?

Recent Visitors: Dr. Che Xiangxin and Dr. Han Shilong, Juijang University medical College, China, with Dr. Tamiro Kamaguchi, Shiga University of Medical Science, Japan.

We now live in a global society, and globalization is here to stay. It affects our economies, the way we exchange information, our language use, and the way we travel. Medicine has become a global enterprise as well.

Infectious diseases such as HIV, West Nile Virus, and hepatitis have spread globally. Social and public health issues such as smoking and air pollution are no longer local or regional problems. The responses to these health issues need to be global as well, and should be based on global guidelines and global standards. The foundations underlying the provision of quality medical care are no different, regardless of whether a physician is practicing in rural China or urban Manhattan.

We believe that U.S. medical schools need to embrace the move toward globalization, not only in their educational curricula but in their institutional foci. Global REACH is the mechanism to make that happen at the University of Michigan.

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