Partnerships
UNMC has about 60 active or pending international agreements for education, research, and business collaborations in 22 countries.
In 2021, three new agreements were signed with partners in Bangladesh, Mexico, and Nigeria.
The Office of Global Engagement promotes and facilitates partnerships for global engagement by managing and evaluating international partnerships, as well as mapping UNMC's global footprint.
Our responsibilities include review and documentation of past international agreements, strengthening of relationships with existing partners, and developing new strategic partnerships. We assist with the process of signing and tracking international memorandums of understanding and agreements, in conjunction with the office of the senior vice chancellor for Academic Affairs.
UNMC's Global Presence
UNMC welcomes opportunities to expand its presence around the world through agreements that benefit its students and provides opportunities to further its mission. We have active or pending international agreements for education, research, and business collaborations with 22 countries.
We have agreements with Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Colombia, Congo, Democratic Republic of Egypt, Finland, Ghana, India, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Russia, Rwanda, South Korea and Tanzania.
Partnership highlights:
Universidad Anáhuac Xalapa College of Medicine, Mexico
This partnership encourages academic and research collaborations. One of the first outcomes of this partnership was the creation of a joint course for students at both universities in 2016. UNMC’s Dr. Armando De Alba taught the Foundations of Public Health course to second-year medical students in Mexico and online to UNMC College of Public Health students. More than 40 students were able to exchange ideas and share both academic and professional experiences during the semester.
The Office of Global Engagement organizes a Medical Spanish and Global Health course in Xalapa. While UNMC students are given priority, the application process is open to all medical and health students, residents and faculty across the U.S. and Canada. This course is offered multiple times a year.
Xalapa became a sister city of Omaha in 2005.
Family Medicine Training Program, China
UNMC has collaborated with Xi’an Jiaotong University in the field of Family Medicine since 2008 and Shanghai Tongji University since 2010. The two joint-training centers, Sino-US Training Center for General Practitioners in Xi’an and Shanghai Sino-US Family Medicine Exchange and Training Center, were established in the spring of 2009 and the spring of 2011, respectively. An annual symposium has been held in China since 2009 with thousands of participants from across China.
An annual leadership course has been held at UNMC since 2012, training more than 80 Chinese family medicine leaders every summer. Dr. Jeffrey Harrison is the host of UNMC's U.S.-Sino Family Medicine Leadership Course, in which a group of family medicine practitioners and medical residents from Shanghai, Xi'an, and Beijing, China, come to UNMC to learn advanced U.S. training techniques and models, such as how to use simulation. China has a weak primary care infrastructure, so it has identified expanding and strengthening its family medicine physician pool as a priority for improving health care delivery. The program teaches team-based care, interviewing skills, strategies for dealing with angry patients, and how UNMC faculty gives feedback and evaluates learners.
The 10th Shanghai Sino-U.S. Family Medicine Forum was held in Shanghai in October 2019. The forum brought together family medicine and primary care physicians in China with several faculty members from the UNMC Department of Family Medicine and the College of Medicine. Several faculty from McGill University in Montreal also participated.