Spring 2012 –
In the past four years, MIT Sloan’s Global Health Delivery Lab (ghdLAB) has covered a good deal of ground—tens of thousands of miles, in fact.
With some 40 projects completed on African and Indian soil, and another set of student teams overseas in March 2012, MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer Anjali Sastry said ghdLAB has embarked on an interesting look at its impact so far. The goal? To assess the benefits, including performance improvements and lessons learned, gained by partnering organizations that have worked with students on the front lines of healthcare delivery—from Kenya to South Africa to India.
MIT Sloan’s rich experience with action learning inspired Sastry to design ghdLAB in 2008. The current study could help fill a void in the research on action learning in management education.
“We are going back to every project to ask how we helped. Did we impose any costs? Are we seeing benefits spilling over to other areas? What about continuity? Are people building on the work that we did?” said Sastry. “We’re gathering firsthand data and conducting systematic interviews. Early indications reveal more positive effects than we had realized.”