Dmitriy Kurdyumov, left, and fellow health care leaders from Russia listen to translators during a tour of the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment while visiting Vanderbilt last week. (photo by Joe Howell)
Quest to improve world’s health knows no borders
A delegation of 25 health care leaders from the Russian region of Kirov toured Vanderbilt University Medical Center last Friday, near the end of a weeklong visit with several health care officials and organizations in Washington, D.C., Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville.
The delegation was sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based Open World Leadership Center, which was established by Congress in 2000 to support exchanges between Russians in public service and their U.S. counterparts in local, state and federal government, law, education, health care and other fields. The program has since expanded to include other former Soviet republics.
Bill Frist, M.D., talks with Alevtina Fedorova during the Russian health care delegation’s visit last week to several areas of Vanderbilt University Medical Center. (photo by Joe Howell)
“Opening the dialogue between Nashville and the Kirov region is a key strategy for the U.S. and Russia to identify ways to improve the health of our populations, which share many of the same challenges,” said the Vanderbilt faculty member who initiated the visit, Bill Frist, M.D., adjunct professor of Surgery and a former two-term U.S. Senator from Tennessee. While in the Senate, Frist helped launch Open World.
Frist accompanied the delegation on its Nashville leg, and hosted a reception for delegates last Friday evening at his home in Nashville.
In spearheading this visit, “I wanted to get a group of real physicians seeing real medicine,” said Frist, who has a longstanding involvement in international efforts to improve health.
Irina Ivanova gets some hands-on experience during the Russian delegation’s visit to the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment. (photo by Joe Howell)
A team of six Russian-English translators accompanied the group. Over breakfast in the boardroom at Eskind Biomedical Library, the group was introduced to VUMC by David Posch, CEO of Vanderbilt University Hospital and Clinics, and Bill Stead, M.D., associate vice chancellor for Health Affairs and chief strategy and information officer.
The group proceeded to tour the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment and the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.
After visiting VUMC, the group heard presentations by leaders of Meharry Medical College, met Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and other local officials, and visited Healthways, a disease management company based in Franklin, Tenn.
The prior evening, several members of the group went line dancing at a downtown bar, and, at another downtown nightspot, three members of the group managed to talk their way onstage, performing Russian folk songs.
The Nashville leg of the trip was jointly organized by Hope Through Healing Hands and the Nashville Health Care Council.
After first meeting with public health officials in Washington, D.C., the group had split up for homestays in Knoxville and Memphis and a week of visits with health care officials and organizations in those cities. They departed Nashville for Russia on Saturday.