Dr. Kurt Figueroa is a student in UGHE’s Master of Science in Global Health Delivery (MGHD) Class of 2018. Unlike most of his peers, Figueroa is not Rwandan. He moved from working at a small Partners In Health clinic in the Sierra Madre mountains of Chiapas, Mexico—his home country—to a similarly remote hospital that PIH supports in Rwanda. When he’s not in class, he works at Butaro District Hospital as the oncology clinical officer.

Here he shares his experiences as a global health student at UGHE and as a doctor providing care in the far reaches of Mexico and Rwanda.

What attracted you to the university?

I first heard about UGHE when they were accepting applications for the first group of students in 2015. At the time, student positions were only for people based in Rwanda. So I sent emails asking about the program and they said I needed to wait for one year, when they would probably open it for international students. So I waited and kept working in Mexico. After one year, I applied again, as well as to another program, and I was accepted to both.

What made me choose UGHE was that it was a two-year program, and also that it was another opportunity to work with the organization that helped me take my first steps in global health—PIH.

[Read the full story at PIH.org]