Global and Community Health Track

Welcome to the Global and Community Health Track for OB/GYN Residents at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies!

What is “global and community health”?

There are various definitions of global and community health, but all address the notion that health issues, determinants of health, and solutions to health problems are transnational phenomena that transcend geographical boundaries. Global health is the health of individuals and their communities across the globe, hence acknowledging that global and community health are intrinsically interrelated. Global and community health is addressed by multidisciplinary collaboration both within and beyond traditional health sciences. The concept of reducing disparities in health, both in local communities as well as throughout the world, involves a combination of research, education, and service. These principles often guide interventions and solutions geared towards improving global and community health.

Why does the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital OB/GYN residency program have a global and community health track?

The purpose of offering the Global and Community Health Track for OB/GYN residents at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital is to help inspire and train OB/GYN physicians to engage in improving the lives of women not only their local communities, but also around the world. With focused learning and didactics on topics related to the complexity of addressing health disparities throughout the world, the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Global and Community Health Track aims to educate the participating OB/GYN residents on how to be efficacious in global and community health endeavors. These endeavors could include careers that possibly involve living internationally, working with local or international healthcare organizations focused on reducing health disparities, or even being a strategic donor who supports sustainable projects geared towards improving the lives of women around the world.

What does the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Global and Community Health Track include?

Starting in 2017, Orlando Health Winnie Palmer began to form a focused learning program geared towards understanding and addressing global health issues. Since the inception of what then developed into a global health track for OB/GYN residents, which was followed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the program has continued to morph in response to resident learning as well as global and community health needs.

Today, the Global and Community Health Track at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer is a mentored, four-year experience offered to interested residents starting in their intern year. Training and activity focused on:

Public health basics such as statistics, program planning, critical appraisal, and evaluation
Leadership development to glean tools for effective leadership, including in multi-cultural settings
Clinical instruction for how to navigate the challenges of practicing in a low-resource environment-Community volunteering and outreach to apply studied concepts, and experience global and community health in the Orlando area as well as via partners around the world

Monthly activities involve a variety of the following: dinner didactic sessions to discuss a topic related to women’s global and community health, local community outreach with community partners (such as the local refugee assistance organization and an Orlando-based Federally Qualified Health Center/FQHC), book club (to discuss assigned group-distributed books related to global and community health), and participation in global health conferences/webinars around the world (through the World Telehealth Initiative/WTI).

The Global and Community Health Track also helps foster preparations and connections for its participants to create an elective in the second and/or third year of residency in an international or U.S. location of the resident’s choice, pending the resident’s personal interests, language skills, and partnering institutional needs. Residents in 2026 did rotation time abroad in Togo and Ecuador.

Who will be leading the Global and Community Health Track?

Suzanne Burlone, MD, MSPH, is the faculty mentor and program lead for the Global and Community Health Track for the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer OB/GYN residency program. She is a faculty academic OB/GYN hospitalist at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer and a public health master’s degree graduate of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health from within the Department of Maternal and Child Health. She lived for six years in rural Ecuador early in her OB/GYN career, has worked in Ethiopia, and has over 20 years experience analyzing community needs and coordinating OB/GYN educational activities throughout Latin America. She has fostered partnerships in Honduras, Ecuador, and with the larger Central American OB/GYN governing body (known as “CAFA”), having guided the creation and implementation of ACGME-based OB/GYN residency program review in Central America.