Fig 1. Formation of a community of inquiry through an international action-inquiry partnership.

This figure depicts the individuals, institutions, and groups [26] involved in this community of inquiry after it first came together in 2015 at the direction of the Minister of Health of Liberia to support the country’s Health Workforce Program Strategy. a) In 2016, the President of Liberia asked the Ministers of Health (MoH) and Education (MoE) to improve conditions for medical students at Liberia’s only medical school, A.M. Dogliotti School of Medicine (AMD), which is part of the University of Liberia College of Health Sciences (ULCHS). The Ministers commissioned a mixed methods study from a Yale University (Yale) faculty member and her students, in collaboration with the Dean of AMD, and with facilitative partnership from program managers at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, Inc. (CHAI). The action and inquiry steps pursued by this team founded the community of inquiry, with funding from the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and, later PEPFAR/HRSA. b) The community of inquiry expanded in subsequent years to include additional faculty and students at AMD, including visiting AMD faculty from west and east African medical schools, as well as faculty, staff, and program managers from Yale, Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), and Liberia’s Ministry of Health, with distinct (and sometimes intermittent) funding from a variety of sources (rendered complementary by the efforts of the community of inquiry) including the World Bank, USAID, and PEPFAR/HRSA.