By Medge Owen

This year, we chart progress in reaching the Millennium Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2000. Goals four and five call for a worldwide reduction in newborn and maternal mortality. Progress has been made; however, too many deaths still occur. There are an estimated at 298,000 maternal and 3.7 million neonatal deaths worldwide each year. Solutions are complex and require an in-depth understanding of issues at the crossroads of medicine, culture and socioeconomic status. Going forward, who will understand and address healthcare inequity? Kybele is working to find answers to that question through its active involvement in shaping tomorrow’s global health leaders.

Since Kybele’s inception, almost 15 percent of its participants have been upper-level resident and fellow physicians. They have come from 15 institutions across four countries. They are at the peak of their medical knowledge acquisition yet remain impressionable and malleable. In a global health environment, they operate both as teacher and learner as they gain an understanding of real-world healthcare problems that too often result in unnecessary and untimely death. Our goal is to expose them to the issues, to stretch them, to change them and to launch global health as a platform for their life’s work.

The Spring 2015 Kybele newsletter is dedicated to the young physicians who aspire to the calling of global health. We will tell their stories and share some exciting news of future partnerships that will continue to build tomorrow’s global health workforce.