The International Visitor Leadership Program was developed in cooperation with the Institute of International Education, which arranges 370 study tours in the U.S. every year, for more than 2,400 emerging leaders worldwide. Visitors meet with their counterparts in several fields, including: the rule of law, public health, civic engagement, science, and technology, to name a few. The program was constructed to cultivate lasting relationships between the people in the program and their American counterparts, as well as a source of knowledge sharing.
Dr. Lene Berge Holm and Dr. Kaja Beate Nyquist are both educated within the medical field. Lene Berge Holm finished her PhD not more than two weeks ago, with a focus on optimizing health care. Kaja Beate Nyquist is a Ph.D student and part-time physician in the emergency unit in Oslo. As part of the IVLP, the two of them have travelled across the United States to learn about the American health care system, and to potentially acquire knowledge that is applicable to the Norwegian system, as well as to build relationships with American institutions and personnel. Also, as part of the long term perspective, the relationships that have been built have the potential of integrating the two countries, expanding the already existing terms of cooperation and research
Bjørn Bjørnbeth from Oslo University Hospital explaining differences between health care in Texas and health care in Norway to the IVLP participants at Norway House exchange even further.
Both Lene and Kaja agree that there are substantial differences between the Norwegian and American health care systems, especially when it comes to patient focus. As the two systems have different sources of income, the Norwegian system being fully backed by the government and the American system being one based on a mixture of private insurance and public assistance, the approach to the patient was described as different by the two visitors. By experiencing the differences between the two systems, the two emerging leaders are better able to shed light on which practices are good and identify those among them that can be transferred in some form from one system to another, thus illustrating why the ILVP is such a good program.
Through the IVLP, the Norwegian emerging leaders were able to visit various medical institutions within the Texas Medical Center (TMC). The TMC is the largest medical complex in the world, with 54 member institutions, 92,500 employees and 34,000 students, and annual visits of 7.1 million patients. Having visited the TMC here in Texas, Lene and Kaja headed to Boston to continue their educational journey throughout the United States.
NOTE: This article was slightly amended 5/6/13 to reflect that IVLP is a U.S. government/U.S. State Department program and 100% funded by U.S. taxpayers.