Did you ever wonder how some physicians choose to go into emergency medicine, as well as what it takes to be successful—on a global scale? What about working in resource poor regions around the world that have multiple high demands following devastating catastrophic events?
Dr. Janet Lin is just such a person, and an amazing and inspirational one. She is the Director of Health Systems Development and one of the founding core faculty at the Center for Global Health in the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also is an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and has an Affiliate appointment in the Division of Community Health Sciences in the School of Public Health.
She served as the Director of the International Emergency Medicine and Health Program in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and the Global Health Fellowship Program and she founded the Chicago International Medicine Society to build collaborating Relationships amongst health care professionals doing global health work in the Chicago area.
She has an amazing CV—UPenn, undergrad for Biology/French, then MD and MPH from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and she’s finishing up an MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dr. Lin has earned certificates in tropical medicine and has consulted on global health issues. Her work has led her to pursue activities in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. She has conducted ongoing work in rural western Guatemala working with local health promoters and a clinic providing medical care, Education and research. She coordinated emergency medical response following the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 and continues to be involved in redevelopment of medical education and rebuilding of health care systems in Haiti. Work in Africa has primarily been in remote hospitals, working with large HIV and TB populations.
I think her synthetic, integrative, multidisciplinary approach to service development and provision along with education and training in a sustainable, scalable, generalizable manor is groundbreaking. Dr. Lin has been recognized locally, nationally and internationally for her service and education. She is a recipient of the University of Illinois’s Excellence in Teaching Award and has recently won the Emerging Innovator Award for her role as principal investigator of Project HEAL.
Dr. Lin brings an amazing skillset to all she does to help others as she lives her life in full while making a substantial improvements in training models, viable programming, and Innovation and vision in all that she does to make the world a better, more resilient, and healthier place.
