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.

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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.

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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.

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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 critical access hospital in Thailand.

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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. 

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From the Mae Tao Clinic Website:

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Mae Tao Clinic Mission Statement:

 

MTC is a community-based organisation (CBO) that provides and advocates for an equitable and essential health system, education and protection for vulnerable and displaced people living in the Thai-Burma border area and Eastern Burma. MTC addresses the needs and human rights of these people through comprehensive programs and a collaborative approach with local, national, international and government bodies.

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In 1989 Dr. Cynthia Maung and a small group of students opened a makeshift medical clinic on the outskirts of Mae Sot, Thailand. Since that time the Mae Tao Clinic (MTC) has grown into a comprehensive community health centre and a hub for regional health training with more than 3,000 graduates serving clinics, schools, villages, factories, camps and peri-urban slums along both sides of the Thai-Burma border. The clinic’s health services have to cope with both acute and chronic medical problems. Staff members treat almost everything from minor maladies to non-/communicable diseases to chronic diseases.

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                                                        Vice News article about MTC "The Miracle Clinic"