Coastal Maine
Global Health
About Us
Welcome to the Coastal Maine Global Health Fellowship. We are an innovative training program for emergency medicine physicians that couples the experience of rural emergency medicine in mid-coast Maine with the needs of global emergency care along the Thailand-Burma border.
Currently, there are 34 global health fellowships in emergency medicine in the United States. The vast majority of them are housed within academic departments at tertiary academic medical centers. These institutions are able to provide personnel, resources, and educational modules to their partner institutions across the world through grant mechanisms.
At the same time, these collaborations often suffer from a mismatch of pathology, hospital size, and clinical care pathways that leads to sub-optimal knowledge transfer and care when Western tertiary care is applied to low-and-middle income settings.
The CMGHF is able to leverage the strengths of a regional model of care by coupling the clinical practice of emergency medicine of a high-functioning rural emergency department in Maine with the volume, flow, and pathology of a similarly-sized critical access hospital in Thailand.
The fellowship begins with a clinical period at Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine. Pen Bay is a community hospital with a broad catchment area stretching across three coastal counties in mid-coast Maine with varied geography and population densities.
The hospital is staffed by a multi-specialty group including dedicated emergency providers, neurologists, cardiologists, general surgeons, obstetricians, and orthopedists. It retains a close-knit cadre of physicians committed to stabilizing emergencies of all types.
The Kwai River Christian Hospital has been serving the needs of the internally displaced populations along the southern border between Thailand and Burma since the 1950s. It has been sustained through a combination of international grant funding and clinical revenue, and recently was awarded a USAID grant for re-development.
The hospital has 40 beds and is staffed by two full time physicians with a rotating group of international providers. The hospital hosts the US Army's regional malaria surveillance program and also has multi-year funding with the Global Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to address tuberculosis and infectious diseases in the region.
Fellowship Structure
MAINE
We currently have an opportunity for fellows to provide clinical care as Attendings Physicians in the Emergency Department at Penobscot Bay Medical Center.
The fellow will be provided with housing in Rockport for the duration of their work at Pen Bay.
There are opportunities to develop short-term observerships in obstetrics, anesthesia, neurology, general surgery, and orthopedics.
THAILAND
Clinical work in the ED, Inpatient Unit, Labor & Delivery Unit, and OR at KRCH.
The fellow will become well-versed in emergency obstetric and surgical techniques per the guidelines set forth by the International Collaboration for Essential Surgery.
The fellow will be housed in Physicians' Quarters on-site at KRCH. All international travel expenses are covered by the fellowship.
The work in Thailand will occur through an attachment and supervision by a fully licensed Thai physician.
Under this attachment, the fellow will provide supervised clinical care, teaching, and develop clinical pathways to ensure high-quality care in a resource-limited setting.
Current Projects:
-Global Health Engineering & Design with Rice 360 Institute for Global Health
-Remote surgery quality assurance
-Hospital re-design and expansion
Maine
July & August (2 mos.)
Thai-Burma
September to December (4 mos.)
Thai-Burma
January to May (5 mos.)
Maine
June to August (3 mos.)
Fellows
Program Faculty
ROHITH MALYA MD
Attending Physician
Emergency Medicine
Fellowship Director
ELIZABETH LAWRENCE MD
SARA W. NELSON MD
Attending Physician
Emergency Medicine
Attending Physician
Emergency Medicine
CHRIS J. MICHALAKES DO
Attending Physician
Emergency Medicine
To Apply
Please forward a letter of interest accompanied by your CV to the Fellowship Director by November 1.
A request for letters of reference will follow once your application meets our initial selection criteria.
Rohith R. Malya MD MSc FAAEM
Fellowship Director, CMGHF