L to R: Drs. Iman Hakim, Charles B. Cairns, Joan Shaver, Ivo Abraham, Elizabeth Krupinski and Michael Katz.

Leaders from the UA Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Public Health promote international collaboration to strengthen the health-care workforce globally.

Last week, an interprofessional leadership team from the Arizona Health Sciences Center (AHSC) at the University of Arizona traveled more than 8,500 miles to the desert plains of Muscat, Oman, to present at the 7th Annual International Conference on Health Issues in Arab Communities.

The delegation, seeking to strengthen the global health-care workforce through current and future collaborations between the University of Arizona and the Middle East, included:

• Joan Shaver, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor and dean of the UA College of Nursing
• Iman A. Hakim, MD, PhD, MPH, professor and dean of the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health
• Michael Katz, PharmD, professor and director of international programs for the UA College of Pharmacy
• Charles B. Cairns, MD, FACEP, FAHA, AHSC assistant vice president for clinical research and clinical trials, and interim dean of the UA College of Medicine – Tucson
• vo Abraham, PhD, professor of pharmacy and medicine, director of the Center for Health Outcomes and PharmacoEconomic Research (HOPE Center) and member of the UA Cancer Center
• Elizabeth A. Krupinski, PhD, program director for the Southwest Telehealth Resource Center, associate director of evaluation for the Arizona Telemedicine Program, professor in the UA College of Medicine Departments of Medical Imaging, Psychology and Public Health, and vice-chair of research & education in the Department of Medical Imaging

AHSC leaders, open to new collaborations and initiatives in the Middle East, presented on current health-care collaborations between the University of Arizona and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), including:

• UA College of Nursing faculty members serving as capacity-building consultants to nursing faculty at the University of Tabuk to advance nursing education and practice across cultures (Dr. Shaver).
• The Global Health Institute partnership between the UA Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health and Al-Imam University to promote a globally trained, interprofessional workforce through a four-week Arizona summer research training program for international public health students and health-care professionals (Dr. Hakim).
• The Advanced Clinical Pharmacy program, including internship and residency training developed by the UA College of Pharmacy for clinical pharmacy faculty members from KSA Colleges of Pharmacy and leading hospitals (Dr. Katz).
• The E3O Partnership between the UA HOPE Center and the Ministry of Health, KSA, to improve the quality, efficiency and outcomes of medication use and pharmaceutical care in the Kingdom through an integrated program of workforce research and innovation, translation and workforce development (Dr. Abraham).

Additionally, UA leaders spoke to initiatives involving or translatable to global health systems. This included various facets of the Arizona Telemedicine Program (Dr. Krupinski) and a data system to enhance bio-surveillance, situational awareness, emergency preparedness and response for health events, outbreaks and emergencies by integrating near real-time data and analytics from global sources, including social media (Dr. Cairns).