President Edgar B. Rodas, MD, FACS, FAIM

As I begin my term as president of ACAIM, I believe our organization has an opportunity and a responsibility to provide the leadership on one of the most important challenges facing global health (GH) and academic international medicine (AIM) education, how to ensure that educational programs are rigorous, equitable, accountable, and genuinely beneficial to the institutions and communities which they serve and work for.

Contemporary educational programs in GH and AIM have evolved from short-term electives into structured programs intended to build competencies, strengthen partnerships, and improve health systems. Yet substantial variability remains in program design, preparation, supervision, assessment, governance, data management practices and outcomes. Recent consensus work, defining core competencies, offers an important foundation, but consensus alone is not enough. Our next task is implementation: translating shared principles into standards that programs can use, partners can trust and learners can demonstrate is imperative. I propose that establishing enforceable standards for quality, equity, reciprocity, and accountability in global and international medicine education become leadership priority for the coming year. Our goal should be to develop a practical competency base framework that can ultimately support a seal of quality for programs that meet clearly defined requirements. The framework for this has been under development by some of our members for the last few years. This should not be a symbolic designation, or a measure of where learners have traveled. Certification should recognize programs able to clearly demonstrate that learners have in fact learned what they can do, how responsibly the program operates and whether partner institutions and communities retain meaningful authority and benefit from these programmatic, sustainable relationships.

A credible framework must require a shared leadership model, operating across partnerships and networks – institutions, communities, regions, countries, and continents, all collaborating toward establishing broad accountability, accessible fees, fair compensation, responsible data practices, learner and patient safety, transparent governance, and protection against extractive educational, clinical, research, and financial practices. These principles must be enforceable rather than aspirational. Programs that fail to meet essential requirements should not receive certification and serious violations should trigger corrective action, suspension, or withdrawal.

The path to implementation should be deliberate, transparent and measurable.