Working to expand access to care, support prevention, and create more opportunities for healthier lives.
Explore healthcare, learn alongside local professionals, and build leadership through your campus chapter.
Your brigade is one important part of sustainable development, advancing community health and opportunity year-round.
Access to medical and dental care matters. So do clean water, safe sanitation, a healthy home, and someone nearby who can help when a health concern arises.
Global Brigades brings these pieces together with community partners. Students contribute through Medical, Dental, and Public Health Brigades, while local professionals and community health workers help sustain the work beyond each visit.
For communities, that means a broader approach to health. For students, it means learning how care, prevention, and the conditions of daily life connect.
Choose an experience that connects your interests with the priorities of our community partners.
Learn alongside licensed healthcare professionals and support community clinics. Explore primary care, health education, and the circumstances shaping patients’ health.
For students exploring medicine and healthcare.
Explore Medical Brigades
Learn from licensed dentists and support oral health education. See how dental care, prevention, and everyday habits contribute to community wellbeing.
For students exploring dentistry and oral health.
Explore Dental Brigades
Work alongside communities and local professionals on water access and household health infrastructure. Choose a focus on Community Water Systems or Healthy Homes.
For students interested in public health and prevention.
Explore Public Health BrigadesAll three experiences welcome students interested in understanding community health. Roles, activities, and program availability vary by country and brigade.
Learn, contribute, and lead alongside people working toward healthier communities.
Observe clinical care or contribute to prevention through community infrastructure. Connect your interests with the people and systems that shape health.
Learn from clinicians, dentists, community health workers, engineers, and local staff, depending on your program. See how local expertise guides the work.
Work alongside community partners, listen to their perspectives, and practice communicating across languages and backgrounds.
Recruit classmates, organize your chapter, fundraise, and prepare together. Build responsibility and teamwork through a shared commitment.
Students contribute in roles appropriate to their preparation. Clinical decisions and procedures remain with licensed healthcare professionals.
Hear from students and faculty about learning, community partnership, and the people behind each brigade.
Beatriz Oliveira Antunes
Vanderbilt University
Medical/Dental · Panama · August 2025
This experience taught me the importance of cultural sensitivity and active listening when working with diverse patient populations. I gained invaluable insights into the challenges communities face in accessing quality healthcare.
Dr. Clint Willson
Louisiana State University
WASH · Honduras · March 2025
The local team's expertise and dedication were inspiring. Students were able to see firsthand how sustainable development requires deep community engagement and respect for local knowledge.
Wendy Moreno
University of Los Angeles California
Medical Brigade · Greece · March 2025
Building relationships and understanding different perspectives was just as important as the physical work we completed. These connections made the experience truly transformative.
Watch a chapter-created video, then explore more brigade stories on the Global Medical Brigades YouTube channel.
Each program contributes a different part of the community health picture. Together, they connect access to services with healthier daily living conditions and ongoing local support.
Medical and Dental Brigades support clinics led by licensed professionals, alongside education that helps families understand and care for their health.
Public Health Brigades contribute to community water systems and household improvements that support sanitation, hygiene, and healthier homes.
Community health workers serve as a first point of contact for primary health concerns and a connection between communities and Global Brigades’ health programs.
In Central America, Global Brigades has trained and equipped 300 active community health workers who live in partner communities and remain a local point of contact for health concerns.
Public health and water and sanitation committees help sustain household infrastructure and community water systems. Local engineers and doctors follow up with community partners to carry the work forward between brigades.
Another example: Athens, Greece. The Global Brigades Polyclinic operates a full-time clinic for migrants and refugees. Funded by Global Medical Brigades, the clinic serves thousands of patients each year, with care continuing between brigades.
A view of Global Brigades’ work across care, prevention, and community health support.
Patient consultations
Reported on the current Medical Brigades’ homepage.
Dental consultations
Reported on the current Dental Brigades’ page.
People gaining access to clean water
Through water systems built with partner communities.
Households with new health infrastructure
Receiving one or more household improvements.
Communities with improved water infrastructure
Supporting access to clean water.
Community health workers trained
Supporting partner communities in Central America.
These measures reflect different activities and units. Consultations are encounters, not unique patients, and figures should not be added together.
Explore Our ImpactCommunities pursue health and economic goals together. Global Brigades’ broader model connects healthcare, water and sanitation, and economic development.
Access to medical and dental services, health education, and trained community health workers.
Community water systems and household infrastructure that support hygiene and healthier living conditions.
Financial inclusion and opportunities to strengthen livelihoods, supporting communities as they work toward their own economic goals.
Local teams and community partners shape ongoing programs. Student chapters contribute funding, preparation, and participation within that broader effort. A brigade is a way to join the work—not its beginning or end.
Connect with a chapter around the world, or bring Global Brigades to your university.
Connect with a group at your university or bring classmates together to start one.
Explore Medical, Dental, and Public Health programs with our team. Prepare and fundraise together.
Work alongside local professionals and community partners, then bring what you learn back to campus.
Bring your interests, your curiosity, and your commitment to learning alongside others.
Explore the Programs Talk With Our Team
