The International Honors Program (IHP) is a program of World Learning / SIT. In spring 2013, the program was implemented from February 27th to April 1st with the participant of 30 students from different U.S well-known universities such as Harvard, Brown, Yale, Williams, Colby…During learning time in Viet Nam, all students had an opportunity to find out health issues and health care system in Vietnam. They also had a chance to explore Vietnamese culture by staying in Vietnamese families.
Site visits were added to this program to help the students learning more effective. All students really got profound experiences when visiting to Hoa Binh village – where undertakes to raise, treat and educate for kids affected by Agent Orange (AO). This visit helped the U.S students to know more about the negative effects of AO on human health, especially Viet Nam young generation. Besides that, Students could get lot of knowledge about Vietnam traditional medicine from experts in this field from Hanoi Medical University when they visited to Department of Traditional Medicine – Hanoi Medical University. Here, they also had opportunities to try Vietnam traditional treatments such as acupuncture. Moreover, they were arranged a rural visit to Ta Van village, Sapa town, Lao Cai province where they were able to explore many ethnic minorities’ life such as H’Mong, Dao… and find out health issues also health care system there.
A case study was a part of this program. The same previous years, case studies of the students focused on environmental health, infectious diseases, mental health, non-infectious diseases, aging and maternal and child health.
Besides the study course, IHP students also had an opportunity to travel to many famous places in Viet Nam such as Ha Long Bay, Hoi An, Huế, Nha Trang, Mui Ne, Ho Chi Minh city in one week vacation. After 5 weeks staying in Vietnam, all the U.S students have evaluated highly of Vietnamese friendship, cultural and traditional family values.