medicine World That Brings the C l o s e r ask Above: The Himalayan Health Exchange (HHE) medical camp in Kwar, India. Facing page, top: Robert Wood Johnson Medical School students (left to right) Marlene Wang, Julie Szymaniak, Melissa Villars, and Eleni Stavrou, at the HHE medical camp in Kwar. 28 Robert Wood Johnson I MEDICINE anyone. They’ll tell you the world is getting smaller. The more we know about one Gaining experience halfway around the World another from community to community, nation to nation, and even continent to continent, the more familiar we feel. That is particularly true in medicine. There is no longer a great divide in the study of population-level health interventions. India working with the Himalayan Health Exchange (HHE). Jacobo Santolaya spent the end of his first year of medical school— the summer of 2013—in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, working in the Hospital Universitario Son Espases. Julie’s group comprised five Robert Wood Johnson Medical School students and an additional 15 students from around the world, including students from Great Britain. The learning began almost at once. After landing in Delhi, Julie and her group spent two days getting to the Rupin Valley, using a path that is closed six months of the year due to weather. From the valley, the group set up at five different villages, moving from place to place to see and serve patients. “There were many life-affirming moments at the clinics,” Julie says. Four students each alternated working in an internal medicine tent, a J ulie Szymaniak is a second-year medical student at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School who spent last summer in Global health is everywhere people are— whether that’s in Delhi, Bangkok, or Boston. The shift in looking at medicine and health globally doesn’t just help developing nations. It benefits everyone—in understanding both the epidemiology of diseases and how they spread. A by-product of all this is the experience involved in developing a global perspective and the collaborative research that results from helping one another.