Laos project
Health Frontiers is a volunteer outreach of health professionals, focused since 1991 on outcomes in global health and child development that depend primarily on volunteer efforts. Since 1990 hundreds of HF volunteers have contributed to the Laos project. The full time HF volunteers augment the Lao faculty, support the residents and fellows, and coordinate a flow of many visiting short term teaching specialists. They also expend the HF social welfare funds to help desperately poor Lao families afford medical care.
Anthony J. Dean, M.D., FAAEM, FACEP is the Health Frontiers National Field Representative and Emergency Medicine Residency Coordinator in Laos. He is an Emeritus Professor of Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medicine in Radiology, University of Pennsylvania and also Professor Afiliado, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. He developed one of the first Emergency Ultrasound programs in the US and has written and taught extensively on this topic, including taking this training to Rwanda, Zanzibar and Liberia. He has also organized and implemented a residency training program in Emergency Medicine in Guatemala.
Anthony J. Dean, M.D., FAAEM, FACEP is the Health Frontiers National Field Representative and Emergency Medicine Residency Coordinator in Laos. He is an Emeritus Professor of Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medicine in Radiology, University of Pennsylvania and also Professor Afiliado, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala. He developed one of the first Emergency Ultrasound programs in the US and has written and taught extensively on this topic, including taking this training to Rwanda, Zanzibar and Liberia. He has also organized and implemented a residency training program in Emergency Medicine in Guatemala.
Residency training
Health Frontiers has worked with the Lao University of Health Sciences (UHS) and the Lao Ministry of Health to improve health of the Lao people by developing and implementing postgraduate training programs. HF has supported Pediatric Residency training in Laos since 1997, Internal Medicine Residency training since 2002 and Emergency Medicine Residency Training since 2017 . Our flagship Laos Project, now in its 31st year, assisted the Lao University of Health Sciences to graduate more than 140 pediatricians and 120 internal medicine specialists. In 2020, the first 8 emergency medicine specialists graduated. Currently, 40 pediatric residents, 33 internal medicine and 25 emergency medicine residents remain in training.
Former Internal Medicine Residency Coordinator Dr. Christine Johns with internal medicine residents
Lao Pediatricians receive AAP Redbooks at annual CME conference.
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Fellowship Training
In order to further develop clinical and teaching capacity in Laos, HF is supporting fellowship training for residency program graduates. Lao physicians have completed or are completing fellowship in specialties including adult and pediatric: nephrology, neurology, gastroenterology,infectious disease, cardiology, hematooncology; adult rheumatology, developmental pediatrics and neonatology. These Lao subspecialists have been increasingly replacing our Health Frontiers volunteers. Continuing Medical Education HF values lifelong learning for Lao physicians, and supports annual CME activities in Lao language, attended by program graduates and other health care workers from across the country. |
