Emory Global Perioperative Alliance
The Emory Global Perioperative Alliance (EGPA) is a medical student-led, faculty-supervised organization within Emory University School of Medicine. The EGPA's mission is to provide essential surgical services to improve patient quality of life, to engage in collaborative educational efforts with healthcare staff, and to assist in local healthcare infrastructure in communities around the world. Faculty representation includes members from the departments of surgery, urology, obstetrics and gynecology, ophthalmology, and anesthesiology.
The EGPA was formerly known as the Emory Haiti Alliance, named for the annual surgical trips its teams of medical students, residents, and faculty made from 2008-2018 to Hospital Bienfaisance de Pignon in Haiti's Central Plateau, the poorest and most medically underserved region in the country. These annual trips became a summer tradition that focused on integrating medical education with humanitarian objectives, and eventually developed into a month-long global surgery elective for senior medical students.
Unfortunately, political and social unrest, natural disasters, and global pandemics caused the cancellation of trips to Pignon beginning in 2019, though a team of med students led by Carla Haack, MD, were able to accompany and assist her on a medical relief trip to Puerto Rico in June of that year. The organization began establishing contacts with various faculty, organizations, and communities across the globe, including Bolivia, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico, and in 2020 changed its name to the Emory Global Perioperative Alliance to reflect its widening purview.
In 2022, the EGPA announced that it was planning its first surgical trip since 2018 to the rural community of Santa Lucia Utatlán in Guatemala. From June 1-13, Department of Surgery faculty members David Elwood, MD, Stephanie Busby, MD, Barbara Pettitt, MD, and Steven Roser, DMD, MD, accompanied a team of medical student leaders; physicians from the departments of gynecology and obstetrics; and OR staff, nurses, and PAs from Emory University and Grady Memorial hospitals to the campus of the Universidad Rural, where they set up a small hospital.
The EGPA's substantial relief trip expenses are primarily funded by donations. To donate to future trips, please visit the Emory Online Giving page that is specifically configured to accept payments for the Surgery Education Medical Missions account.
Soddo Hospital, Ethiopia
The founding director of the Emory Global Surgery Program was Jonathan Pollock, MD, and he initiated its first outpost in 2011 at Soddo Christian Hospital in Soddo, Wolaita, Ethiopia. Dr. Pollock managed the Soddo rotation onsite for nearly five years.
Soddo Hospital partners with the Pan-African Academy of Christian Surgeons (PAACS) as one of nine academic centers that train national doctors over a five-year surgical residency program. To reverse the trend of Ethiopian residents training in international programs and not returning to their homeland, PAACS stipulates that graduating residents must agree to practice in-country for five years.
The Soddo Hospital site remains an option for Emory Surgery PGY-4 residents to complete a formal six week rotation.
Hawassa, Ethiopia
The Emory Global Surgery Program joined the Consortium for Academic Global Surgery Programs of the American College of Surgeons Operation Giving Back program in 2018. OGB is working to create training hubs around the globe to serve as centers for training surgeons, developing collaborative research projects, and fostering innovation, and the first of these is located in Hawassa, Ethiopia.
Emory's team was the first group to visit the OGB training center in Hawassa in January 2019. It is anticipated that this multi-institutional collaborative will become highly popular with trainees interested in international service and training, and will contribute much to Emory Surgery's tripartite research, clinical, and educational missions.