Standards

Section 1. Institutional Setting and Governance

ISG-1. The chief official of an international healthcare education program must be appointed or recognized by the governing officials or board of the institution. 

ISG-2. The chief official and faculty of an international healthcare education program must be qualified by education and experience to provide leadership in international health education.

ISG-3. A written policy must exist explicitly describe the authority and responsibility for matters related to the international healthcare education program among the chief official of the international healthcare education program, the faculty, and the directors of the other associated programs or institutions. 

ISG-4. The agency or institution of higher education hosting the program must itself provide documentation of its own accreditation process and maintenance thereof to establish eligibility and participate in federal non-HEA funding programs. If the hosting agency or institutions that participates in non-HEA programs does not itself satisfy this requirement, the agency or institution must identify and provide documentation regarding non-HEA- program eligibility of the currently designated other institution or agency that serves as its Federal link.

Note:  A non-HEA federal program is one that specifically requires accreditation by an agency recognized by the U. S. Secretary of Education  before the program can be eligible to receive federal funding e.g. Health and Human Services grants, National Institutes of Health tuition repayment, or Veterans Administration education benefits. The institution seeking accreditation of the program, if not already accredited, must commit to ACIHE that it will expeditiously use ACIHE accreditation or pre-accreditation to establish eligibility to participate in one or more non-HEA Federal programs.

ISG-5. ACIHE shall conduct accrediting activities for U.S. based programs hosted by agencies or institutions of higher education that are accredited by one of the States of the United States of America or the District of Columbia. Programs conducted outside the United States or the District of Columbia may also be accredited by ACIHE if they meet ACIHE accreditation standards.

ISG-6: The agency or institution providing the program must provide a record of compliance with the institution's program responsibilities under Title IV of Health Education Act, based on the most recent student loan default rate data provided by the Secretary of Education, the results of financial or compliance audits, program reviews, and any other information that the Secretary may provide to/require from the agency. If the agency or institution does not participate in Title IV HEA programs, upon request by the institution, accreditation or pre-accreditation will specify that accreditation does not include participation by the institution in Title IV, HEA programs.

ISG-7 Each agency or institution seeking accreditation must complete the full accreditation process within 5 years, including the final accreditation action made by ACIHE.

Section 2. Students

S-1. The program must identify its student learner capacity and strategies to meet the number of student learner demands.

S-2. A written policy must exist explicitly describing strategies to promote and reporting requirements related to student diversity for students enrolled into the international healthcare educational program.

Section 3. Educational Objectives

EO-1. The chief official and faculty of an international healthcare education program must define the objectives of its program. The objectives must serve as guides for establishing curriculum content and provide the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of the program.

EO-2. The objectives of an international healthcare education program must be stated in outcome-based terms that allow assessment of students’ progress in developing the competencies of international/global healthcare appropriate to the students profession e.g. physician, nurse, physical therapist.

EO-3. The objectives of an international healthcare education program must be distributed in written form to all students and to the faculty and others with direct responsibilities for student education and assessment.

EO-4. Defined methods must be designed and implemented to assess learner attainment of objectives.

Section 4.  Curricular Content

CC-1. An international healthcare education program must include instructional opportunities for active learning, critical analysis, and independent study to foster the skills necessary for lifelong learning.

CC-2. An international healthcare education program must ensure that student learners attain basic knowledge of, at a minimum, the following core subjects:

• International Public Health – training to assess the major determinants of health and leading causes of morbidity and mortality, and to identify effective interventions to promote health and prevent death and disability.
• Diseases Of Poverty – preparing to prevent, diagnose and treat the leading diseases associated with poverty in low-resource communities
• Culturally-appropriate healthcare – equipping student learners to ensure that healthcare interventions are culturally appropriate and utilize culturally sensitive methods of communication.
• International Health Leadership – equipping student learners to work with local healthcare systems and healthcare professionals as partners on a health leadership team to plan and implement effective public heath programming.
• Disaster Management – training student learners to mitigate disaster risks and appropriately respond to disaster events.
• International Healthcare Research – equipping student learners with the basic scientific and ethical principles of health research and how to apply field methods for collecting and interpreting data.

CC-3.  The following additional curricular content specific to the stated profession must also be included:

• Dental, Medicine, Nursing, PA, and Pharmacy programs: Diseases Of Poverty – preparing to prevent, diagnose and treat the leading diseases associated with poverty in low-resource communities with respect to the students’ healthcare education program.

• Physical Therapy programs only: Physical therapy in low resource settings – equipping students with the knowledge and skills to provide appropriate care in settings without typical diagnostic information, therapy modalities, assistive devices, and other therapy-related tools.

• Public Health programs only: International Health Epidemiology – preparing students to understand the transmission, surveillance, prevention, and control methods of leading infectious diseases affecting low-resource communities.

 CC-3. An international education program must provide professional students and/or learners with access to relevant and up to date global health/medical information and skill acquisition.

CC-4 The agency or institution providing the program is not required to have separate standards, procedures, or policies for the evaluation of distance education or correspondence courses.   

Section 5. Service-Learning Content

SLC-1. An international healthcare education program must ensure that student learners provide a genuine service contribution by aligning their learning priorities with the needs of the communities and facilities they serve.

SLC-2. A suitable setting for an international healthcare service-learning experience is one that provides healthcare to people who are most disadvantaged – commonly due to cultural differences, language barriers, lack of access to adequate education and healthcare, geographic isolation, or insufficient financial resources. Such a setting may be located in a low-resource nation or among similarly disadvantaged people in a wealthier nation.

SLC-3. Such supervised service-learning activities should include at least 140 contact hours. This may be accomplished through 4 continuous weeks of service-learning activities. Alternatively, shorter weeks of service-learning activities over broader periods of time may be acceptable to provide for more community integration and continuity of learning.

SLC-4. An international healthcare service-learning sites selected must have adequate facilities and contingencies for communication, transportation, accommodations, student safety, emergency healthcare, and evacuation, including appropriate insurance coverage.

SLC-5. An orientation shall be provided for student learners beginning their international healthcare service-learning experiences that provides, at a minimum, responsibilities of health care personnel, personal safety, and emotional wellbeing.

SLC-6. Supervision of student learners in international healthcare service-learning experiences must be provided. Student learners shall not engage in activities for which they are not trained and credentialed.

SLC-7. Supervisors for international healthcare service-learning activities should be qualified by appropriate licensure, education, and experience to guide international healthcare education. Agencies or institutions providing these programs will provide evidence that faculty and supervisors are qualified by education or work experience for their roles.

SLC-8. An international healthcare education program must have written and signed affiliation agreements in place with its service-learning affiliates that define, at a minimum, the responsibilities of each party related to the educational program.

SLC-9. International healthcare service-learning experiences must be periodically evaluated with regard to their impact upon the health and healthcare system of host communities. Documentation of this evaluation must be submitted with the application (if the program is an existing one) or (if a new program) the evaluation plan must be submitted.

SLC-10. If the service-learning experience includes research, the research project must be approved and monitored in accordance with the both the student learners home and host institution policies and procedures for ethical research.

SLC-11 Documentation describing program contents and resources that will be provided to students prior the outset of the program, including admission criteria, curricula, catalogs, grading systems, faculty (and their availability for consultation during the program), facilities provided, equipment and supplies (needed or supplied), student support services (including fiscal and administrative services).

Section 6. Learner Evaluation

LE-1. An international healthcare education program must use a system for the assessment of student learners achievement throughout the program that measures the attainment of the expected competencies.

LE-2. Student learners progress toward the expected competencies must be communicated to the student learner periodically throughout the course of learning, allowing an opportunity for student learner feedback and sufficient time for any required remediation.

LE-3. Clear expectations for student progress and success upon completing course and other evaluations must be communicated to the student from the outset of the course of study.

Section 7. Program and Progress

PP-1. The chief officer and faculty of an international healthcare education program must develop and implement an ongoing plan for evaluation of the program and faculty that periodically collects identified measureable outcome data to evaluate the program and the extent to which its educational objectives are being met. In instances where the program is assessed as deficient, a plan for improvements must be developed, implemented, and evaluated.

PP-2. Students must be given a formal opportunity to participate in the evaluation of program and faculty effectiveness. Students are provided at the outset of the program clear means and instructions by which to register a complaint to the program, on which issues, how (for each issue), how this will be processed, under what circumstances the complaint will be referred to a higher authority including ACIHE, and what avenues are available upon appeal.