Health care voluntourism: Addressing ethical concerns of undergraduate student participation in global health volunteer work (July 2014)

Summary

This paper, published in HEC Forum, focuses on undergraduate student involvement in short term medical volunteer work in resource poor countries, a practice that has become popular among pre-health professions students.

Authors argue that the participation of undergraduate students in global health experiences raises many of the ethical concerns associated with voluntourism and global health experiences for medical students. They propose a framework for guidelines and curricula, argue that universities should be the primary point of delivery even when they are not organising the trips, and recommend that curricula should be developed in light of additional data.