From March 19–29, ten Dartmouth Global Health Fellows (GHF) traveled through Lima, Cusco, and the Sacred Valley for a “Sprinterim” immersion that bridged the gap between classroom theory and real-world application. This wasn’t your classic “spring break” trip; it was a carefully sequenced journey through schools and community clinics designed to make global health feel lived-in.
Why? The goal was to bridge the connection between the classroom and the lived experiences of populations our students study throughout the year. They spent their time in Peru analyzing the intricate relationship between social determinants of health, local healthcare infrastructure, natural assets, and cultural belief systems to develop a more ethically-grounded perspective on health and development equity in resource-constrained settings.
Across ten days and twelve collective blog entries, a clear picture emerged: this experience fundamentally shifted the students’ perspectives on development and community-led change.
Cole, Day 5
The Global Health Fellowship has really been instrumental in seeing the power that ordinary people can have when they band together.
Najma, Day 5
Just as important as what you see in Perú is who you see it with.
Camilo, Day 3
I left the Policlínico with hope. A major issue in science and medicine is the underrepresentation of low and middle-income countries.
The Immersion
The itinerary challenged students to engage with Peru’s complex public health ecosystem. In Lima, the cohort visited Innova Schools and the youth development NGO PerúChamps. They spent time with Socios en Salud, observing their Community Health Worker programs and TB/HIV clinics.
The journey then moved to the Sacred Valley and Cusco, where students explored Quechua archaeological sites and hiked the Inca Trail. Throughout the trip, guides actively reframed the students’ understanding of history, forcing them to look past colonial narratives and acknowledge indigenous engineering and resilience.
The Impact: Four Key Learning Objectives Achieved
The value of the trip centered on four transformative themes:
- Students demonstrated grounded public-health literacy by moving from national TB statistics to articulating, from direct clinic experience, a reasoned argument for the importance of local research leadership in LMIC contexts. They returned with a deep understanding of why local research leadership is vital.
- Students applied a sharpened decolonial lens by identifying and correcting colonial misnomers, tracing the erasure of indigenous engineering and religion, and critically questioning whose histories are told. Students were pushed to question who holds the narrative and what has been erased.
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Students showed increased personal and vocational direction by reframing program success in community-centered outcomes and translating that direction into action (e.g., inspired by the grassroots work they witnessed, one student even submitted a grant proposal to fund solar power for a communal kitchen in Carabayllo). For many, the trip crystallized their career goals.
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Students developed and demonstrated a community cohort mentality in written reflections and concrete plans to reconvene and continue collaboration on campus. The cohort evolved from a group of students who took Spanish lessons together into a tight-knit professional and personal support network.
The Bottom Line
This fellowship succeeded because it refused to be comfortable. Students grappled with altitude sickness, a grueling physical trek, and the cognitive dissonance of being tourists in a country whose systemic inequalities they were studying.
By the final day, the fellows weren’t just returning with photos; they were returning with better questions. Their blog entries show a profound self-awareness of their own privilege and a renewed commitment to ethical, impactful global health work. That intellectual and personal growth—more than any single site visit—is the true measure of the GHF program.
Key partners:
Innova Schools | PerúChamps | Socios en Salud | Policlínico SES | Museo Larco | Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI)
