Response to COVID-19 pandemic: Beyond medical education in Brazil.

We received a response to our Editorial from a group in Brazil that raised valuable concerns about the struggles in transforming medical education in low-income countries. Here, we address the concerns they raised that reinforce the global need for a "Coalition for Medical Education."

We are disheartened to hear the disproportionately negative impacts coronavirus disease (COVID) is having on health care education in low‐income countries. Given Brazil's reliance on public medical education and the public health care system, it seems COVID risks creating a significant educational deficit in a sizable proportion of Brazil's physician population. This is exactly the sort of discussion that we were hoping to provoke. The hurdles that Carvahlo et al present highlight the need for collective effort to meet the needs of health care workers at this time.

We would like to respond to the concern that a transformation of medical education into the digital age would require significant human and financial capital. We agree, particularly at an institutional level, that mobilizing the resources necessary to accomplish such large‐scale change would be unrealistically costly and time‐consuming. Therefore, we want to emphasize the need for collective action amongst institutions and countries, public and private, rich and poor, to distribute the responsibility and costs. Accumulating and organizing content from across the world in an easy‐to‐access platform is the sort of mechanism needed to overcome these hurdles.

Thus, we have coined the term “Coalition for Medical Education.” It is our intent to bring attention to this crisis in medical education caused by COVID with the severe disruption of all aspects of undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate, and continuing medical education. Accordingly, it is our hope that we can identify like‐minded partners who would find “strength in numbers” and accordingly join forces and resources to create broad platform of educational opportunities that are not limited by geographic restrictions or travel limitations.

It is our hope that more educators, students, and institutions continue sharing the challenges they are facing in medical education. Awareness will be the catalyst for action.