Global Summer 2025 brings together experts from Argentina, Colombia, the United States and Mexico to reflect on the future of medicine with humanistic, intercultural and collaborative approach.
In a global context where health systems face deep transformations after the Covid-19 pandemic, the UPAEP, through its faculty of medicine, strengthens its commitment to comprehensive medical training and with international vision.
This was evident during the 2025 edition of the Global Summer program, which brought together prominent academics from Argentina, Colombia, the United States and Mexico in a series of conferences, workshops and master classes that addressed key issues such as public health, intensive therapy, toxicology, medical anthropology, health policies and ethical use of artificial intelligence in medicine.
Jorge Meneses Díaz, director of the UPAEP School of Medicine, said that these types of initiatives represent a substantial advance in the consolidation of international academic networks. “We realized that many problems are shared between countries, even if they live from different contexts. This collaboration allows us to build more human, closer and global impact solutions,” he said. In addition, he announced that the program will continue to grow with new alliances in Europe and Asia, and that soon UPAEP students will participate in academic stays in India.
Among the most prominent voices of the meeting was Dr. Melani A. Balauz, a medical specialist in Intensive Adult and Teacher therapy in various universities in Argentina. From his experience in a maternal-infant public hospital in Buenos Aires, Balauz remarked the urgency of humanizing intensive care, a challenge that intensified with the health crisis of the pandemic.
“We have learned that human contact is also part of the treatment. In my hospital we have expanded visit schedules, promoted the mother-child bond even in neonatal care and team worked with specialists in mental health to mitigate isolation,” he said. In his passage through the UPAEP, he taught cardiology with an integrative approach that crosses toxicology, pregnancy and critical care.
Dr. John Jairo Ocampo Rincón, a research professor at the University Foundation of the Andean Area, highlighted the importance of implementing community primary health models that consider the prevention and active participation of families. “Health does not begin in the hospital, but at home. That is why a public policy is required that empowers communities, provides them with tools, access and education to take care of from their environment,” he said.
Ocampo, who also fulfills functions in high complexity hospitals, valued the Global Summer as a horizontal learning space. “Here we understood that being wrong is not failing, but growing. We all sit with all, recognizing that knowledge is built in collective and that the affective is as important as the scientific.”
For his part, Dr. Ryan I. Logan, a professor of Medical Anthropology at California State University, Stanislaus, invited future doctors to integrate the cultural, economic and social dimension in medical care. “Health decisions are not taken in a vacuum. They are mediated by culture, history, poverty and institutional distrust. It is essential that the doctor listen, understand and act sensitive,” he explained.
During the Global Summer, Dr. Logan shared work experiences with health promoters in marginalized communities in the United States, stressing that many barriers in public health are not solved with technology, but with empathy and inclusion. “The theory also matters, because it allows to connect all the factors that affect the well -being of a person,” he concluded.
Another of the central themes was the impact of artificial intelligence on medical training. Dr. Balauz stressed that the problem is not the use of these tools, but the way they are taught. “We must teach to think with AI, not only to use it. Do not miss the clinical judgment or empathy,” he said.
Along the same lines, Dr. Ocampo mentioned that in Colombia an educational policy has been developed to ethically integrate AI in medical curricula, promoting critical thinking and context analysis. For his part, Dr. Meneses Díaz said that “AI can be a catalyst as the Internet was, but we must ensure that it also reaches the most vulnerable communities.”
Dr. Carlos Flores Pereda, director of the Master in Public Health of the UPAEP, stressed that these types of meetings allow to adapt and replicate successful models in the Mexican context. “We have learned from the experiences of Argentina and Colombia. It is already contemplated to adapt its primary care model as a pilot test in Puebla communities. What has learned here can transform our practices,” he said.
For Carlos Flores, the Global Summer not only strengthens academic training, but also “reminds us that we deal with people, not with diseases.” He valued intercultural coexistence as an opportunity to train more conscious, empathic and open professionals.
In an environment of reflection and thanks, the participants agreed that the challenges of medicine in Latin America require a collaborative, more human and less focused on individualism. “We are seeing the ravages of global selfishness in war conflicts. In medicine, that logic cannot continue. This program allows us to see the other as an ally, not as competition,” said Meneses Díaz.
Jorge Meneses closed the press conference with a clear message: “Form doctors capable of collaborating, listening and acting with global vision is our priority. And this type of programs not only open our minds, they also bring us closer as people and as societies.”
Thus, the Global Summer UPAEP 2025 is consolidated as a regional and international reference in integral, scientific, technological and deeply human medical training. The university already works on new alliances and themes for its next edition, reaffirming that the medicine of the future is built on a network, with science, empathy and sense of community.
