Humanitarian Partner: Mae Tao Clinic - Mae Sot, Thailand
Timeline: Indefinite
PURPOSE: To enhance the training capacity of the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand, and produce educated medics who can better attend to the health needs of the displaced ethnic minority populations of Eastern Burma.
OBJECTIVES: To share curricular components from the University of Utah Physician Assistant Program with the educational staff of the Mae Tao Clinic for the use in their multiple training programs.
INFORMATION: University of Utah Physician Assistant Program course materials will be accessible online. Basic health education might also be available to the general public in Burma (Myanmar) through the Democratic Voice of Burma broadcast system.
PUBLICATIONS:
- Pedersen, DM, Pedersen, KJ, Santitamrongpan, V., Barker, D., The Burma Medic: An International Physician Assistant Analogue. J of Physician Assistant Education. 23 (3), 43-47, 2012
- Pedersen, DM, Barker, D., Santitamrongpan, V., Pedersen, KJ, Kim, H., Thailand International Elective (TIE): A Model Curriculum in International Health and Cross-Culture Experience. J of Physician Assistant Education. 17 (3), 51-55. 2006
- Hunter, R., Lee, C., Pedersen, D., Pedersen, K., Connecting Past and Present: Field Study along the Thailand/Burma Boarder. May 2008
"The Medics in the Thai/Burma border refugee camps, the Back Pack Health Worker Team Medics, and the Medics at the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand operate very much like US Physician Assistants (PAs). They extend access to medical care to the vulnerable population of displaced persons. The Medics are educated to take patient histories, perform physical exams, diagnose, and initiate treatment plans including the prescribing of medications and the performing of surgical procedures."
-Don Pedersen, PhD, PA-C, 2012
"Todays real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. Today, no walls can seperate humanitarian or human rights crisis in one part of the world from national security crisis in the other. Directly or not, we are paying for Burma's failures."
-Kofi Annan, Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech 2001
