Response

We thank Dr Loh and colleagues for their comments on our recent article.¹ We agree with many of the ideas they shared, including the need to pursue a clear definition of global health, and the need to ensure that “trainee experiences are both viable and valuable.” While we agree that many of the examples we gave for providing care to marginalized communities in Canada fall into the traditional role of family physicians as advocates, we tried to highlight in our paper that global health experiences would complement resident learning within the CanMEDs education framework. The importance of the role of advocate is facilitated and reinforced in the context of global health education, and highlighted in such examples as the Queen’s University global health curriculum. Before global health can be fully integrated into the family medicine curriculum, there needs to be thoughtful discussion regarding what global health constitutes, and strategies to ensure trainees have beneficial experiences while still providing benefit to the community they are serving. It is only with sound academic discussion, such as this, that we are able to find the best way to move forward.

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