LiGHTs
Leaders in Global Health Transformation
Across the planet, the lack of appropriate health care limits human potential in countless ways. New ideas, new collaborations, and new forms of action are needed.
The growing multidisciplinary field of global health is responding to these needs at the intersections of medicine, applied and basic science, government and public policy, engineering, public health, management, law, and the social sciences.
While many students are drawn to the challenges of global health, there are few programs to train new leaders in this emerging field. Leaders in Global Health Transformation, or LiGHTs, is not a formal academic program but is designed to provide students with resources and networks to enable novel outside-the-classroom interaction, learning, and action on global health. Participating students have a chance to shape the conversation that is emerging on our campus.
Now in its second year, LiGHTs gives a select group of student fellows a unique opportunity to engage in dialogs with global health leaders (or “Leading LiGHTs”) from the greater Boston area and beyond. Within the MIT community, LiGHTs fellows are encouraged to create new interdisciplinary approaches to big problems.
The LiGHTs program aims to go beyond raising awareness to enable students to deliver tangible results that are meaningful to its participants and that draw on the best that MIT has to offer. This year’s LiGHTs are together defining the specific results they seek. Anticipated results include a white paper presenting a creative new idea for student engagement in global health along with a project that develops or demonstrates a novel solution to a global health challenge.
The LiGHTs advisors are MIT Sloan’s Anjali Sastry, Erika Wagner of X PRIZE Lab@MIT, and Michael Goldberg of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
reflections on conversations with “Leading LiGHTs” – 2009-2010
