ToT: Teaching Medical Anthropology in Health Settings in the Arab Region

Abstract

Medical anthropology is highly relevant to the practice of health professions in the health sector. While the World Federation of Medical Education (WFME, 2020) includes the discipline in its recommendations, other fields like nursing and occupational therapy have done it without international regulations in parts of the world for a long time. Training teachers of the discipline for the field is still in development worldwide and needs more attention to offer qualified trainers to health schools. In the Arab-speaking world, medical anthropology is underrepresented. After awareness-building in the Arab countries, our first train-the-trainer project took place from August 2020 to December 2021, both virtually and onsite in Egypt. We report from the trainers’ and the trainees’ perspectives and offer insights into our training.

PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY

Medical anthropology offers highly relevant training for practicing health professionals. Depending on the health profession, some curricula have included medical anthropology content for decades. International recommendations for its inclusion only exist from the World Federation of Medical Education. Teaching in health education is a job opportunity for graduates of the field. Even now, academic departments of anthropology rarely offer training opportunities and the creation of thoughtful training for medical professionals requires expertise, experience and local context knowledge. Medical anthropology remains especially underrepresented in the Arab-speaking world. We worked to build awareness in Arab countries and developed and implemented our first train-the-trainer project from August 2020 to December 2021, both virtually and onsite in Egypt. We used the Moodle platform to create an interactive learning space for a six-module curriculum. Each module consisted of literature, videos, and medical comics for the stimulation of discussion in an online forum or during online meetings. It was mandatory to complete at least one task within one month. We designed onsite training in Egypt to inspire a space of interaction to train for teaching and shared experience. Trainees developed a learning process portfolio throughout the training as assessment tool for certification. We also created a database consisting of local cases to be used in teaching. We report perspectives from trainers’ and the trainees’ perspectives and offer insights into our training.

Keywords:

• Teaching
• medical anthropology
• Arab-speaking countries

Acknowledgments

We thank the Austrian Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs for the project funding and the Austrian Cultural Forum in Cairo for their support throughout the training. We want to thank Lamia Moghnieh for her initial engagement as trainer during the first few months.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margret Jaeger

Margret Jaeger: I am an Austrian medical anthropologist who trains in health education for 10+ years in many different countries. I lobby for the field since 2015 and have organized many different activities to promote teaching medical anthropology in health education. Currently, I work in the research department of an NPO within the city government of Vienna.

Farida Abougazia

Farida Abougazia: I am an Egyptian epidemiologist and I currently work in the World Health Organization, Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office. I have a bachelor’s degree in pharmaceutical sciences, a diploma in clinical pharmacy, and a master’s degree in public health from Alexandria University.

Radwa Mohamed Abdel Fattah

Radwa Mohamed Abdel Fattah: I graduated from the medical school of Cairo University, Egypt. I have a diploma and a master’s degree in anthropology and am currently enrolled in a Ph.D. in Anthropology.

Rasha Selim Hassan

Rasha Selim Hassan: I graduated from the faculty of pharmacy at Canal University, Egypt. I gained a diploma and a master’s degree in anthropology and currently, I am a PhD student in Environmental Health. I work as a specialized health promotion and community change behavior consultant with several international non-governmental organizations.

Salma El-Deeb

Salma El-Deeb: I graduated from the faculty of medicine, at Alexandria University, Egypt. I joined the liberal arts diploma at Cairo Institute for liberal arts and sciences, Currently, I am a student in the cognitive behavioral therapy diploma program at the Egyptian medical syndicate. I work as a content manager for mental health website as well as a Psychiatric resident.

Mustafa Abdalla

Mustafa Abdalla: associated researcher at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Free University of Berlin.