SPACIES

SPACIES Committee Renamed: SPA-Global

By Faye M. Evans, MD, Chair SPA-Global1; and David E. Liston, MD, MPH, Vice-Chair SPA-Global2
1Boston Children’s Hospital
2Seattle Children’s Hospital

As of August 1, 2018, the SPA Committee on International Education & Service (SPACIES) will now be designated SPA-Global.  A new name has been selected that is concise and represents the diverse global health activities of the committee.

Over the past few years, the committee has been very active in expanding its global health presence.  Current activities include:

  • The SPA Lecture Library - Tweny-six English and two Spanish peer-reviewed lectures on various pediatric anesthesia topics.  The lectures are purposefully written to be relevant for use in both high and low-resource settings. Since its refurbishment in June 2017, 1,800 users have accessed the series from over 99 countries.
  • The University of Nairobi Pediatric Anesthesia Fellowship - This program recently completed its fifth year. Our committee, along with the WFSA and other partners, continues to work with this fellowship to help strengthen its educational program.  Since its inception in 2013, the fellowship has graduated 14 fellows who have all returned home and are leaders in developing the field of pediatric anesthesia in their home country within Sub-Saharan Africa. For the past four years the SPA has financially supported one fellow each year, which has included their attendance at the ASA and SPA fall annual meetings.   This year we are proud to report that all three of the fellows will have the opportunity to attend the fall SPA and ASA meetings. This has been made possible through the support of the ASA/SPA Global Scholars program and the following children’s hospitals: Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, Seattle Children’s Hospital, and Boston Children’s Hospital. These institutions will also provide two-week observerships to the fellows prior to the national meetings to provide clinical exposure as well.
  • The SAFE (Safer Anaesthesia from Education) Paediatric Anaesthesia Course - A three-day course developed by the Association of Anaesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland (AAGBI) and the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists (WFSA). It is endorsed by the SPA. The aim of the course is to provide refresher training for both physician and non-physician anesthetists in the essentials of pediatric anesthesia. Recently with the support of the Guatemalan Anesthesia Society (AGARTD), and our Latin American anesthesia colleagues, the first SAFE Paeds course in Latin America was held from November 30 – December 2, 2017. in Guatemala City. (Please see article by Gomez and Castro in the current newsletter) Several committee members served as faculty in this inaugural course.  Our future goal is to offer more of these courses world- wide in areas with the most need.
  • The Global Volunteer Opportunities Registry (GVOR) - A searchable registry of NGOs where both SPA members and non-members can find numerous short-term volunteer opportunGGuidelines for short-term missions in global pediatric surgery written in collaboration with our pediatric surgical and nursing colleagues.

    • Butler M., Drum E., Evans F. M., Fitzgerald T., Fraser J., Holterman A.-X., et al. (2018). Guidelines and checklists for short-term missions in global pediatric surgery. Pediatric Anesthesia, 28(5), 392–410. http://doi.org/10.1111/pan.1337

  • SPA representation for the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS) -  GICS is composed of providers, institutions and professional associations from both high and  low- and  middle-income countries (LMICs) working to build safe and effective surgical care for all of the world’s children. Anesthesia is a critical component of this endeavor. Our committee is working to find ways to support this effort on behalf of the SPA.

The SPA-Global committee greatly appreciates the support of both our Board of Directors and the SPA membership.  Furthermore, we encourage any member interested in global health to consider joining and participating in our committee.

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