Social and Community Medicine Option

The Social and Community Medicine (SCM) option of the MGHD program prepares health professionals to become leaders in designing and delivering equitable, community-centered responses to persistent health inequities. Grounded in the principles of social medicine, the program emphasizes the inseparable link between individual health, community well-being, and structural determinants such as poverty, education, gender inequality, and systemic injustice.  

The SCM option addresses these challenges by bridging ethical and theoretical foundations with applied, participatory, and interdisciplinary practice. Rooted in Rwanda’s globally recognized experience in community health and informed by international best practices, the SCM program equips students to co-design culturally resonant and contextually grounded interventions. It develops graduates’ capacity to lead with humility and solidarity, conduct critical research, and mobilize actionable knowledge in partnership with communities and institutions. Students engage deeply with systems thinking, implementation science, and collaborative problem-solving.  

The curriculum combines academic rigor with immersive field-based practicums to ensure that graduates are not only prepared to analyze and critique health inequities but also to lead transformative, community-led solutions that advance social justice and health equity. Graduates emerge as systems-oriented health equity advocates who challenge structural barriers and promote justice; as context-sensitive innovators who co-create solutions with communities; as ethical and reflective leaders who act with integrity; as applied scholars who generate evidence for change; as strategic communicators who translate knowledge into policy and practice; and as effective collaborators who work across disciplines and in partnership with communities to drive impactful action.