CMMB Collaborates with NYU Students
NYU AGPHI team members Sahil Singh, Cara Rubin, Juliana Murillo, Iqra Noor, and Anabelle Bunis with CMMB Volunteer Program Manager Marcia Grand Ortega.
For decades, CMMB has partnered with groups of students at New York University (NYU) to support CMMB projects. Anabelle Bunis joined CMMB as an intern in March 2023 to assist the volunteer program’s monitoring and evaluation efforts and strengthen the evaluation of CMMB’s seven volunteer program principles. These principles were created to guide volunteers to provide high-quality healthcare during their service. Anabelle and Marcia Grand Ortega, Senior Manager of CMMB’s Volunteer Program, connected with the Applied Global Public Health Initiative (AGPHI) lab leadership at the NYU School of Global Public Health to explore opportunities to expand the project further. Given its alignment with AGPHI’s global health decolonization pillar, the initiative was officially integrated into AGPHI as a joint research collaboration between CMMB and AGPHI.
CMMB’s volunteer principles were informed by the work of Dr. Judith Lasker, author of Hoping to Help and by the recommendations of the Advocacy for Global Health Partnerships, a coalition of global health professionals committed to promoting ethical standards in short-term global health engagements. The Advocacy for Global Health Partnerships coalition created the Brocher Declarations that outline the six main principles that should guide ethical and appropriate short-term experiences in global health. These principles were used as the foundation for the research method design and the creation of a volunteer supervisor evaluation survey.
This research helps advance the core principles of CMMB’s Volunteer Program, including sustainability, community collaboration, responsibility, equality, and reciprocity. Beyond helping monitor and strengthen CMMB’s Volunteer Program, this research further contributes to valuable insights toward standardizing the evaluation of ethical volunteer performance in order to promote sustainable and community-driven global health practices.
Accountability in Ethical Volunteerism
AGPHI Lab has partnered with CMMB to co-develop a standardized evaluation tool enabling in-country supervisors to assess volunteers’ contributions after service completion, focusing on the adherence of the six core ethical principles defined by the Advocacy for Global Health Partnerships. The team first designed measurable indicators based on the six Brocher Declaration ethical principles of short-term global health service. These measurable indicators informed a post-service evaluation survey assessing volunteer performance and host community perspectives. Through feedback with CMMB staff and local supervisors, the team ensured cultural and contextual alignment. The survey is currently being utilized at CMMB sites to improve volunteers’ pre-departure training and inform responsible volunteer service experiences.
Preliminary results show that highest mean scores pertain to the statements “the volunteer’s assigned responsibilities matched the program’s needs” and “the volunteer did not show arrogance and was respectful and open in their attitude towards colleagues.” Overall CMMB volunteer performance on average was scored 4.48/5. We aim for this tool to be leveraged by other NGOs to evaluate volunteer performance based on host community feedback.
Public Health Partnership Conference 2025
NYU AGPHI team presenting their poster at the Public Health Partnership Conference.
This year, the NYU AGPHI team was fortunate to present at the Public Health Partnership Conference in Ithaca, New York, on May 2, 2025. The conference, hosted annually by the New York State Public Health Association, is open to any individual or organization passionate about promoting and protecting public health.
Poster created by the NYU AGPHI team presented at the New York State Public Health Partnership Conference.
The team presented their poster, titled “Development of a Tool to Measure the Adherence of Global Health Volunteers to Ethical Guidelines for Global Health Service,” to undergraduate and graduate students and public health professionals from a wide variety of disciplines. The selection process for poster presentations was highly selective and a massive accomplishment for the CMMB and NYU AGPHI team.
Future Project Engagements
Next steps for this research include continuing data collection from survey responses from CMMB volunteer supervisors, expanding the data collection to include hybrid/virtual volunteers, and writing a manuscript to publish research findings. We are excited to see the research continue to advance ethical global health volunteering.