Undergraduate Medical Education
Undergraduate Medical Education has been at the heart of the Kolabo partnership and remains the primary educational focus of the project. The curriculum is adapting and evolving constantly to better meet the needs of Tanzanian medical students and an institution with fewer human resources dedicated to clinical psychiatry and education in mental health.
The project evolved from a pilot in 2016 to a comprehensive course consisting of large group lectures, small groups, clinical presentations and an examination. Our medical education interventions and research focused on building local capacity and seeking innovative ways to deliver a high quality mental health curriculum with limited faculty members. We achieved one of our goals, which was to develop a self sustaining UME program within a span of approximately five years, and the UME teaching is now independently managed by CUHAS staff.
Dr. Rachel Grimminck Introducing Small Group Teaching
As one student stated, “I learned that if you work with patients with mental illness, you can become one of them. Seeing our teachers in this session made me learn that I can treat these patients and not become one. There was the belief that you can catch mental illness.”
Post Graduate Medical Education
Currently there are two psychiatry residency programs in Tanzania. These are located in Dar Es Salaam (Muhimbili National Hospital) and Dodoma (University of Dodoma). It is the hope of our Tanzanian partners that the third residency program will be started in CUHAS, Mwanza Tanzania.
Currently there are five Psychiatrists at CUHAS. Past Kolabo teams helped develop a comprehensive Psychiatry curriculum, which is now fully delivered and managed by CUHAS faculty and educates over 200 students annually. Establishing a Psychiatry residency program at CUHAS would not only increase the number of trained Psychiatrists serving the region, but also strengthen the delivery of the UME curriculum by growing the pool of qualified clinical educators.
Masters of Public Health
Our team is committed to helping support the CUHAS University Master’s of Public Health Program through dedicated teaching in Mental Health. This training is critical to ensure that Public Health Practioners in Tanzania are informed around mental illness and how they can help their local communities.
Scholarships
Since 2014 Kolabo has been committed to supporting local Tanzanian residents as they work towards their dreams of becoming Psychiatrists. Through the Kolabo Scholarship we have helped fund the training of three staff at CUHAS, who are now helping to serve their Tanzanian community.
Research
Research is a pillar amongst the Kolabo team and a key objective for our work. This has been established to ensure that we are using best practices while abroad but also to ensure that our partners are benefiting in a sustainable way. Our work historically has focused on process evaluation and quality improvement. Moving forward, research will be focused on trialing different small group models with the intention of building a sustainable workable model of UME teaching for the CUHAS team in a low human resource setting.