With a large number of registered students, on January 30, the Master’s Degree in Global Health and Migration was officially opened, which is actually the sixth edition of the Master’s Degree in Marginalization, Migration and Poverty Medicine, organized by the Fondazione Idente di Studi e di Ricerca and Caritas Roma since the nineties. This first week was held in the theater of the Casa Famiglia Villa Glori, in Rome. The program, a pioneer in Italy, is aimed mainly at doctors and nurses, and has surpassed expectations, because it has reached almost sixty participants from fourteen Italian provinces. After a few years of not being convened, the good reception that this edition has had demonstrates the need for training in this field, which was already known by the many people who have requested information in recent years.
Caritas Roma Director, Monsignor Enrico Feroci, spoke at the inauguration, emphasizing that “knowing, studying and sharing one’s experience and helping to understand problems is the pedagogy of charity. A pastoral style that is the basis of the Caritas act and from which the experience of this master was born”. Then Enrico Bayo intervened, on behalf of the Fondazione Idente di Studi e di Ricerca, who welcomed all the participants. This round of initial greetings concluded by Luján González, also on behalf of the Fondazione Idente and the Rielo Institute for Integral Development, underlining the importance of this training initiative to serve so many migrant and refugee population, for whom the health service is not guaranteed and remembering Fernando Rielo, promoter of these entities and this line of training, research and health care, which began with the creation of the Poliambulatorio de Roma, together with Caritas, in 1983.
Representatives of the Pontifical Dicastery for Integral Human Development and the International Organization for Migration also took part in this opening ceremony. It was followed by a session on “Global health, social determinants and inequality: meaning and experiences” in which several doctors from the Public Health Institute of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) intervened, as well as the presentation on “Immigration policies in Italy: news and prospective “, by Oliviero Forti, of Caritas Italia.
The whole day and in-person week is being coordinated by Salvatore Geraci, responsible for the health area of Caritas Roma, in a very pleasant and familiar atmosphere in which we can perceive the sensibility and receptivity of the participants to acquire vision and technical tools to assume responsibilities and projects, in the wide field of health care for the most vulnerable population.
The master’s degree is developed blended in four face-to-face weeks throughout 2018 with the following calendar and themes:
Lesson Schedule
1st week: Rome, January 29 – February 2, 2018 “The health of immigrants: protection and critical areas”
2nd week: Rome, March 19 – 23, 2018 “The principles of global health, social determinants and inequalities” Focus: the health of Roma, Sinti and Camelists
3rd week: Bologna, 2 – 6 July 2018 “Politics, Anthropology and Human Sciences for Health” Focus: Ethics and Solidarity
4th week: Rome, 24-28 September 2018 “The health of asylum seekers and refugees: safeguards and critical areas” Focus: invisible wounds
