ABSTRACT
As academic institutions develop training opportunities in global mental health, using a structured framework to build and implement a curriculum can meet the needs of the learners and their training sites, harmonize multiple aspects of the educational experience, and create generalizable lessons for the field. In this chapter, Acharya and colleagues use a case example from developing the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Psychiatry HEAL Fellowship in Global Mental Health. The fellowship, now in its seventh year, trains psychiatrists and other clinicians from the United States, Navajo Nation, Nepal, and Mexico. The authors use Kern's six-step process for curriculum development, a structured framework that includes problem identification, targeted needs assessment, goals and learning objectives, educational strategies, implementation, and evaluation. The authors describe generalizable strategies to use this process, whether in developing a formal degree-granting program (e.g., nurses seeking specialization in global mental health) or on the job (e.g., primary care providers receiving mental health training as part of a task-sharing intervention in low-resource settings). The authors also describe and provide suggestions for special considerations in global mental health that may not be covered by traditional frameworks, particularly relating to stigma, challenges in obtaining institutional support, addressing structural and institutional marginalization of vulnerable populations, and the financial and human resources needed for a successful program.
