The Association of Academic Health Centers (AAHC) hosted Associate Dean for External Medical Affairs, Dr. Fadi Bitar, for a webinar presentation entitled “International Collaborations - Building Bridges, Sharing Knowledge and Understanding Needs - The American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) Experience.” The webcast took place in July 2015 and has been posted on AACN's webinar website. Click here to watch the video.
The Association of Academic Health Centers International (AAHCI) focuses on bringing together institutions that serve the academic health center mission along with a global vision of enhancing health and well-being worldwide. AUBMC is part of the AAHCI with Associate Dean Bitar as the designed AUBMC member of the network.
In his presentation, Dr. Bitar introduced AUBMC as an institution proactively engaged with 61 national, 8 regional, and 47 international agreements. He defined AUBMC regional partnerships with associates in Iraq, Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, KSA and the Gulf area and elaborated on one of AUBMC’s major collaborations with the Iraqi Ministry of Health, which involves activities related to clinical, educational, and training arenas.
Associate Dean Bitar added that AUBMC has established an extensive system of international collaborations with US institutions, universities and medical schools, and the major goal of these agreements is to continuously advance and stay up to date in education, training, and research. He presented three examples of such correlations: the AUBMC/Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York Agreement, which is supported by the charitable Bobst Foundation, the AUBMC/MD Anderson Cancer Center Agreement which focuses on the fields of oncology and cancer, and the AUBMC /St. Jude Children’s Center of Lebanon Agreement, which is a charitable initiative to treat children with cancer.
In addition, Associate Dean Bitar stated that AUBMC has learned over the years that these representations have many challenges and opportunities, and the elements of success are multifactorial and include: strategic commitment, agreements of mutual benefits, need/desire balance, allocation of adequate resources, “understanding” rather than “knowledge”, stakeholders/end users’ buy-in, and proper execution.
Dr. Bitar concluded that AUBMC enjoys the American Standards of Higher Education, the unique accreditation status in the region, and the profound reserve of Human Resources it has acquired. It has been able to exceptionally understand the region’s culture, language and needs, and thus is well-positioned to play a comprehensive role as the partner of choice when it comes to setting an affiliation with an academic medical center.
