Moving Beyond Professional, Disciplinary and Epistemological Boundaries
Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine revolutionized the use of problem-based learning in medical training. This pilot has led to the development of a new model for career guidance in health. Students in high school and college interested in pursuing a career in health can learn from the digital stories tested in this pilot. These digital stories will be arranged not by profession or discipline, but by problem. A problem-based approach to career guidance will free students from overly focusing on degrees, training, and on disciplinary and professional boundaries. This will allow them to redirect their attention toward the specific problems that they are passionate about solving. Health is transdisciplinary, and presenting the pathways people have taken to forage dynamic careers has the potential to ignite passion in students, and will give them permission to explore.
Darlene and HIV: A Career Guidance Use Case
Darlene discovers that pursuing an MD and specializing in infectious disease is but one of many paths that she can take. Darlene explores the profile of a public health professional who launched a HIV prevention campaign covering 38 countries. She listens to a psychology researcher at the Centers for Disease Control, who was once a school superintendant who designed a wellness and prevention program that impacted 30,000 students. She discovers an architect who builds HIV clinics in Russia and in Sub-Saharan Africa; she finds a historian who examines the social impact of HIV on today’s youth. She finds a dentist who implemented a curriculum to add dentists to the primary care team to screen for HIV. She discovers a government policy professional who advocates for the elderly living in hospice facilities that cater to cancer and HIV patients. She is inspired by a financial analyst who brokers anti-retroviral sales to free clinics and by a lawyer who represents countries and NGOs seeking to obtain patent licenses from drug companies to produce generic HIV drugs that will extend the lives of millions. All of these people work to reduce the burden of HIV, but they do it through unique professional and disciplinary approaches. Darlene now has a great deal to explore, and has been inspired by learning not only what global health is; she has also learned who global health is, and the ways people solve the health problems that are important to her.