Contact Information

Global Surgery Initiative
Katherine Albutt, MD

Yawkey Building, 7th Floor
55 Fruit Street
Boston, MA  02114

Accessible
Near Public Transit

Explore This Program

    About the Program

    An increasing number of academic surgical providers, resident trainees and medical students are interested in contributing to sustainable, capacity-building endeavors in low- and-middle-income countries. Joining this movement, members of the Department of Surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital have created the Global Surgery Initiative (GSI) as their own response to global health care needs.

    Mission and Goals

    The mission of the GSI is to establish international partnerships across disciplines in resource-limited settings, not only to perform surgical operations as visitors, but also to train local surgeons and share medical technology beyond Mass General.

    Building on past experience, the GSI aims to transform volunteer global surgery efforts into sustainable surgical training partnerships that strengthen surgical systems both at home and abroad. This effort is based on an established formal curriculum in global surgery to provide surgical residents with structured opportunities in research, education and clinical work for a career in global surgery.

    To assemble the human resources available at Mass General, this endeavor involves:

    • Administrating a department-wide survey to assess resident and faculty interest and expertise
    • Developing an online crowd-sourced activities map for chronicling departmental efforts
    • Establishing an academic partnership with the Department of Surgery at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST) in Uganda

    By organizing the collective experiences of colleagues, synchronizing current and past global work at Mass General, and leveraging the funding resources available at home and at partner institutions, the Mass General GSI seeks to engage in longitudinal collaborations that can provide academic benefit to our foreign partners as well as our surgical trainees.

    Global Surgery Projects

    Mass General global surgery efforts span across more than 30 countries. Our recent efforts have focused on developing and implementing more comprehensive surgical curricula at underserved sites such as Mbarara, Uganda.

    Explore an interactive map of our current global surgery projects

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    Disaster Medical Response

    The Global Surgery Initiative provides medical care designed to meet the challenges of today’s complex disasters, both nationally and internationally. Disaster teams from Massachusetts General Hospital, in collaboration with the United States government and other non-profit organizations, have the capacity to respond to the full spectrum of humanitarian crises resulting from both natural and man-made disasters. Mass General provides multidisciplinary response teams designed to provide the highest level of clinical expertise to meet the diverse needs of disaster victims.

    Members of the Department of Surgery have provided disaster medical response in many recent disasters such as:

    • El Salvador Earthquake (1986), Project HOPE
    • Armenia Earthquake (1988), Project HOPE
    • Russian Train Disaster, Ufa, Russia (1989), Project HOPE
    • Hurricane Andrew, Homestead, Florida (1992), U.S. National Disaster Medical System (NDMS)
    • Hurricane Marilyn, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (1995), U.S. NDMS
    • Hurricane Georges, Gulf Coast (1998), U.S. NDMS
    • World Trade Center Terrorist Attack (Ground Zero), New York (2001), US NDMS/International
    • Bam, Iran Earthquake (2003), U.S. NDMS/IMSuRT
    • Banda Aceh Tsunami, Indonesia (2004), Project HOPE
    • Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana (2005), U.S. NDMS/IMSuRT
    • Haiti Earthquake (2010), U.S. NDMS/IMSuRT
    • Typhoon Haiyan, Philippines (2013), International Medical Corps (IMC)

    International Trauma and Disaster Institute

    The International Trauma and Disaster Institute (ITDI) at Mass General is a center of excellence for disaster medicine. Under the direction of Susan M. Briggs, MD, MPH, FACS, the ITDI has developed training programs and manuals designed to train multidisciplinary medical responders in the key principles of disaster preparedness and response. The first edition of the Advanced Disaster Medical Response Manual is available in eight languages. The second edition, published in English in 2014 by the Mass General Department of Surgery and the Harvard Medical School Program in Global Surgery, is currently under publication in Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

    Learn more

    Advanced Disaster Medical Response Provider Courses

    Asia

    North America

    South America

    Education

    We offer educational opportunities for residents, fellows and medical students who are interested in pursuing international work. Opportunities are available for clinical, research and surgical education projects in resource-constrained countries.

    Learn More

    For more information about a specific global surgery project, please contact one of the program participants listed on our interactive project map.

    Our Team

    Katherine Albutt, MD

    Susan Miller Briggs MD, MPH and Kletjian Family Endowed Chair in Global Surgery

    In her clinical work, Katherine Albutt, MD, Susan Miller Briggs MD, MPH and Kletjian Family Endowed Chair in Global Surgery, focuses on trauma, emergency surgery, and critical care, with a particular interest in pancreatitis and complex intra-abdominal infections. Dr. Albutt has had a significant commitment to global surgery during her surgical career. She was the recipient of the Paul Farmer Global Surgery Fellowship during her surgical residency and worked in more than 10 countries worldwide, including Africa and the Middle East. Trauma and acute care surgery educational initiatives and recognizing healthcare disparities have been a major emphasis of global surgery programs. Dr. Albutt has worked with Dr. Briggs and the Mass General team in Uganda and Rwanda.

    Susan M. Briggs, MD, MPH, FACS

    Susan M. Briggs, MD, MPH, FACS, is an associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School and the director of the International Trauma and Disaster Institute at Mass General. She completed her surgical training at Mass General and her Master of Public Health in International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Briggs has been active, both nationally and itnernationally, in trauma and disaster relief activities with the U.S. government and non-governmental agencies such as Project Hope and the American Refugee Committee. Currently, she is supervising medical officer of the Department of Health and Human Services/Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR)/Office of Preparedness and Operations (OPEO) Specialty Medical Teams, including the International Medical Surgical Response Team (IMSuRT). She has participated in numerous national and international disasters, including the Armenia earthquake, the World Trade Center bombing, the Barn, Iran earthquake as head of the U.S. Disaster Team, the Katrina hurricane relief in Louisiana and the humanitarian response to the earthquake in Haiti.

    Deepika Nehra, MD, On-site Trauma Surgeon and Instructor

    Deepika Nehra, MD, is a surgeon who completed her Mass General Surgery Residency in 2014 and a Trauma and Critical Care Fellowship in Harbourview Medical Hospital in Seattle, Washington in 2015. She was appointed to oversee Mass General Global Surgery Initiatives for the year 2015-2016 in Mbarara, Uganda, where she has been living and working at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)/Mbarara Regional Referral Hospital (MRRH). She focuses on improving systems for the management of critically ill surgical patient through clinial work, resident instruction and curriculum design.

    Steering Committee

    Many department members are also actively involved in the Global Surgery Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital.

    • Geoffrey Anderson, MD
    • Philip CHang, MD
    • Tiffany Chao, MD
    • Marc de Moya, MD
    • Jennifer Doyle
    • Daniel Driscoll, MD
    • Peter Fgenholz, MD
    • Gennadiy Fuzaylov, MD
    • Henning Gaissert, MD
    • Haytham Kaafarani, MD, MPH
    • David Lawlor, MD
    • Virendra Patel, MD, MPH
    • Johanna Riesel, MD
    • Justin Verge

    Our Partners

    We collaborate with various organizations that offer opportunities in global health, including:

    Publications

    View select publications from our team members:

    Chao TE, Mandigo M, Opoku-Anane J, Maine R. Systematic review of laparoscopic surgery in low- and middle-income countries: benefits, challenges, and strategies. Surgical Endoscopy, 2016

    Chao TE, Riesel JN, Anderson GA, Kitya D, Doyle J, Mullen JT, Briggs SM, Lillemoe KD, Goldstein C, Cusack JC. Building a global surgery initiative through evaluation, collaboration and training: the Massachusetts General Hospital experience. Journal of Surgical Education, 2015

    Chao TE, Sharma K, Mandigo M, Hagander L, Resch SC, Weiser TG, Meara JG. Cost-effectiveness of surgery and its policy implications for global health: a systematic review and analysis. Lancet Global Health, 2014