Community & Public Health Action Committee (CPH)

Committee goals:

• Engage with future physicians to educate their communities about public health issues
• Empower future physicians to advocate and raise awareness of issues within their communities
• Seek topic guidance advice to develop and execute local programming to promote primary care

In the effort to promote public community health, the CPH committee focuses on topic including th following:

• Climate change and environmental impact
• Food production
• Public Health
• Health Promotion
• Preventive Medicine
• Primary Care workforce
• Disability rights
• Structural Competencies and much more

And get involved


• Organize local events to promote primary care

• Call legislators to advocate for community and public health initiatives

• Host speakers, panels, discussions and debates on current issues in primary care

• Reach out to the CPH committees for ideas, advice and support

What is the Environmental Health Action Committee?

The assignment of the Environmental Health Action Committee is to establish, promote, and advance the voice and activism efforts of medical students fighting for solutions to climate change and the wide variety of environmental and health issues associated with climate change.

Our goals include:


• Expanding medical education to include the role of climate change in public health

• Encouraging for legislation that promotes federal support to fight against climate change and to develop federal, state and local programs that promote environmental health and sustainability.

• Promoting individual and community based changes in daily life that improves environmental and personal health.

• Educating the public on the relation between environmental climate change and personal health by providing access to educational material and actionable activities.

Overall, as IIMSA’s newest action committee, our overarching in the future is to bring awareness to the concept of environmental justice and its impact on human health. At IIMSA, we recognize that the effects of environmental health are pervasive as it relates to health disparities based in race, gender, national origin, or income.

The Gender & Sexuality Action Committee

The Gender & Sexuality Committee is dedicated to combating sexism, heterosexism, and patriarchal discrimination to ensure equal access to medical care and medical education. We are student leaders who are passionate about supporting the health of people with uteruses and the LGBTQIA+ communities through advocacy efforts, research, and amplifying voices of the medically marginalized.

Global Health Action Committee

What is Global Health?

Global health is “the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide” (The Lancet), “a concept fabricated by developed countries to explain what regular practice in developing nations is.” (The Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH)
At its core, global health is a constantly evolving general guiding principle, an organizing framework for thinking and action, with a vision of a world with equitable access to health and wellbeing for all. This interdisciplinary framework incorporates not just medicine but human rights, environmental science, public health, economics, and more.

IIMSA’s Global Health Team

The Global Health (GH) Action Committee executes IIMSA’s programming and advocacy efforts in the many interconnected issues global health envelops.
The Global Health team will focus on promoting ethics in global health practices and raising awareness on opportunities available in global health to members at all areas of their training – pre-medical, medical, and residents. We hope to increase student involvement in global health while staying true to the oath we all take – to do no harm.

De-Colonizing Global Health

Global Health has become increasingly popular with undergraduate, medical schools and residency programs increasing global health training opportunities.
Unfortunately, there is a lot wrong with how global health is designed, structured, taught, and practiced.


The decolonization of global health (DGH) must address colonialism including supremacy, racism, sexism and capitalism. What DGH means and how it is to be carried out means something different to everyone depending on where they stand and from the position they speak.
According to Seye Abimbola, a global health professor at the University of Sydney it is not “possible or advisable to see ‘decolonizing global health’ as one movement. It is such a complex mission, a complex term; in fact, a combination of terms, each with several moving parts ‘decolonizing’ and ‘global health’ that it is impossible for people who use them to mean one or the same thing. I hope we can be comfortable with that.”
Students must demand that their colleges and universities offer Global Health curriculum that is critical, and grounded in historical, anti-colonial, and political perspectives.

Health Policy Team

We, the next generation of physicians, recognize the need for greater political advocacy from the medical profession and are dedicated to serving patients through health policy reform. IIMSA Encourages You to Lift Your Voice as a Future-Physician & IIMSA Member!

Medical Education Team

The mission of the Medical Education Team at IIMSA is multipronged. From a patient perspective, we aim to ensure that undergraduate and graduate medical education is sensitive and responsive to the evolving health care needs of diverse international communities. From a provider perspective, we aim to increase accessibility to medical training for traditionally underrepresented segments of our society whilst advocating for a reduction in the financial burden that education places on burgeoning physicians. Overall, we strive to equip our members with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to be active participants in shaping an educational environment that best prepares physicians to enter the dynamic health care arena and ultimately make a substantive difference in the lives of their patients.


• Diversity and Inclusion in Medical Education: Learn about privilege, power, and difference and how pipeline programs for underrepresented physicians can be successful and mindful of their communities.

• Curriculum Reform Initiative: Advocate for improving your education by becoming an activist in your own institution and working with your Curriculum Committees to shape and improve your learning.

• Financing Medical Education: From student loan reform to increased funding for more residency positions, engage in making sure our communities have enough physicians to care for them.

• AWARE—A Week of Addiction and Recovery Education: Our collaborative programming with IIMSA Community and Public Health Action Committee, work to foster compassion for substance abuse and mental health issues and reduce stigma in both the profession and public at large.

• Hidden Medical Histories: Volunteer to author awareness-promoting bite-sized tweets and instagram posts that highlight the historical context surrounding medical discoveries and coincide with the timing of the national health observance calendar.

• A Community Curriculum: Bringing Social Determinants of Health into the Medical School Curricula: Want to learn how to care holistically care for patients? Curious about exploring the non-strictly clinical aspects of medicine? Interested in exploring, the “conditions in which your patients are born, live, work and age” (i.e. social determinants of health)? Join us for a webinar series where we discuss social medicine, “the systemic study of the relationship between society disease and medicine.”

Wellness & Students Life Action Committee

The Wellness & Student Life (WSL) Action Committee is dedicated to both trainee wellness and patient wellness through the development of patient-centered care and of supportive educational environments. These goals require an emphasis on patient-centered care over physician-centered care, especially as that care pertains to integrative/complementary/alternative medicine. The WSL committee also advocates for and supports the need for trainees to have regular access to medical humanities to foster healing through understanding, community, creativity, personal reflection, and a connection with humanity.

Our Goals & Getting Engaged


• Student Wellness: Define and implement research to determine and address unmet medical student needs in their educational experiences as it relates to physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being.
View Our Wellness Resources: Yoga, Breathing, & Mindfulness Exercises

• Humanism in Medicine: Extend opportunities to physicians-in-training in the development of lifestyles that counter the deleterious effects of stress through creative expression, self-care, balance and holistic goals for personal growth and professional development.

• Student Support: Provide student wellness resources that will allow physicians-in-training access to information for their personal growth and well-being. Offering creative outlets where physicians-in-training can express and reflect on their experiences in academic environments, working on the wards and/or engaging in community service.

• Student Debt: Advocate for the affordability of medical education and reducing student debt through legislative action and education, as evidenced by legislative changes, favourable debt repayment plans for residents, and increased transparency in medical education tuition costs.