IMER Newsletter - Winter 2009 (pdf)
Minnesota has become recognized as an epicenter in the field of Immigrant Health due to a major influx of immigrants in the 1980's and 90's from Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Indeed you don't have to leave Minnesota to see patients with "tropical diseases", such as malaria, strongyloidiasis, or buruli ulcer—even in January! Tuberculosis, which is declining in most states, has not abated in Minnesota, with over 75% of cases occurring among the foreign born. Over 400 immigrants with HIV/AIDS are cared for at clinics within the Twin Cities, which has become a microcosm of this devastating epidemic in their homeland.
These demographic factors, coupled with increased travel of Minnesotans to tropical countries, have stimulated major changes in the curriculum of the University of Minnesota Medical School. Minnesota physicians need to include exotic diseases in their differential diagnoses and understand how language and cultural barriers impede appropriate medical intervention and preventative healthcare. Because of these dramatic events brought about by factors related to the phenomenon of globalization, the Medical School is developing a new "Global Health Pathway". Entering medical students who already know they want a career in International Health once training is completed are candidates for this pathway.
