As young medical students and then again as resident trainees, we were both heavily influenced and motivated by our respective experiences working in clinics and hospitals in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Over the past decade, we have continued to work in global health. While joining many of our colleagues in the mission of global health equity, we have noticed that the desire to serve is often hampered by overwhelming student loans -– or its efficacy diminished by fragmented opportunities that lack local partnerships or structured collaborations with long term goals and benchmarks.

We recently published an opinion piece with Paul Farmer that has reinvigorated the call for a U.S. Global Health Service Corps. The program could become a Marshall Plan for health by supporting local providers and U.S. health care professionals to work, teach, learn, and enhance the health care workforce and infrastructure in resource poor settings. Physicians, nurses, public health professionals, and others could work to address the diverse public health needs in these places with a focus on infrastructure development, knowledge transfer, and capacity building.

We think the time is right to create a Global Health Service Corps. In addition to the massive surge in interest in global health, development has come to play an increasingly important role in U.S. foreign policy. As the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s signing of the Peace Corps Act approaches, we have a unique window to change how the United States engages the world and invests in its global health initiatives.

Please visit our website and sign our petition to show your support!

-Vanessa Bradford Kerry and Sara Auld, Global Health Service Corps

The Millennium Campus Network held a conference this past weekend to discuss global poverty and health. ONE’s former intern, Sam Vaghar, helped create this new network of Boston area colleges and universities, and their conference hosted over 700 students and included top global health experts like Ira Magaziner, Dr. Paul Farmer, as well as an event with musician John Legend and Dr. Jeff Sachs.

I attended the first day of the event at MIT and immediately noticed a few ONE shirts and many, many ONE bands. After opening statements and a very good speech by Sam, the keynote address was given by former presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards. In his speech, Sen. Edwards spoke about his travels to Uganda and the extreme poverty he witnessed in Africa. He spoke about the need to fight AIDS and malaria to help bring stability to poor nations and citied America’s moral standing in the world.

After his speech, I was able to briefly speak with Sen. Edwards and thanked him for raising the issues of global poverty while on the campaign trail. We even talked about the global poverty speech he gave in New Hampshire.

From the campaign trail to the colleges campuses, people everywhere are organizing and realizing that in today’s world, that we have the resources to fight global disease and end extreme – less than a dollar a day – poverty.

-Matthew Bartlett