Linking Learners for Life Where They Live (L4): Developing a Global Health Initiative for Student Engagement

This article describes a graduate student learning experience as part of an international nursing collaborative working together to develop an academic partnership for global health education in the circumpolar north. The experience provided an opportunity to conduct a pilot project in a rural, remote, northern community using an indigenous, global context. Building on the Canadian–Siberian collaboration, the graduate student attended an academic institution in Siberia, where she focused on the sharing of expertise, knowledge, and insights in order to address the challenges facing indigenous people in achieving optimal health and well-being in the circumpolar north. The goal was to create a foundation for “putting health into place” in a northern context, with the hope of creating shared learning opportunities for undergraduate students between the 2 countries.The intent is to share the approach used by the graduate student to use a conceptual model to assess the feasibility of creating a context-relevant global health experience for northern nursing education. •“Linking Learners with Leaders for Life where they Live” (L4) is a project for northern students to become leaders in addressing the health concerns of the north by linking with others within the circumpolar region. The intention of L4 is to situate students to build capacity through local–global relationships.•Therapeutic landscapes was chosen as the conceptual framework to guide the project to allow for the identification of different indicators within the environment that could be studied within a global context and also support interactions in diverse ways of knowing and thinking between persons and environments.•To create a global health experience, a beginning step is building relationships. Achieving sustainability relates to ensuring that a high degree of synergy exists among global partners. Acknowledging and validating the unique contributions each country can contribute to a global health experience are vital for shared learning to expand beyond traditional thinking and health practices.