science

Global health

Global health is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Global health rather than just read about it. In short: Global health is the health of populations in a worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problems that transcend national borders or have a global political and economic impact are often emphasized.

Key takeaways

Global health belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Global health to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Global health from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Global health is the health of populations in a worldwide context; it has been defined as "the area of study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide". Problems that transcend national borders or have a global political and economic impact are often emphasized. Thus, global health is about worldwide health improvement (including mental health), reduction of disparities, and protection against global threats that disregard national borders, including the most common causes of human death and years of life lost from a global perspective. Global health is not to be confused with international health, which is defined as the branch of public health focusing on developing nations and foreign aid efforts by industrialized countries. One way that global health can be measured is through the prevalence of various global diseases in the world and their threat to decrease life expectancy in the present day. Estimates suggest that in a pre-modern, poor world, life expectancy was around 30 years in all regions of the world (mainly due to high infant mortality). Another holistic perspective called One Health can be used to address global health challenges and to improve global health security. The predominant agency associated with global health (and international health) is the World Health Organization (WHO). Other important agencies impacting global health include UNICEF and World Food Programme (WFP). The United Nations system has also played a part in cross-sectoral actions to address global health and its underlying socioeconomic determinants with the declaration of the Millennium Development Goals and the more recent Sustainable Development Goals. The field of global health law studies international lawmaking bodies, such as the WHO, and their effect on global health.

Definition

Global health employs several perspectives that focus on the determinants and distribution of health in international contexts.

Medicine describes the pathology of diseases and promotes prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Public health emphasizes the health of populations. Epidemiology helps identify risk factors and causes of health problems. Demography provides data for policy decisions. Economics emphasizes the cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit approaches for the optimal allocation of health resources. Other social sciences such as sociology, development studies, psychology, anthropology, cultural studies, and law can help understand the determinants of health in societies. Both individuals and organizations working in the domain of global health often face many questions regarding ethical and human rights. Critical examination of the various causes and justifications of health inequities is necessary for the success of proposed solutions. Such issues are discussed at the bi-annual Global Summits of National Ethics/Bioethics Councils.

History

Important steps were taken towards global co-operation in health with the formation of the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank Group in 1945, after World War II. In 1948, the member states of the newly formed United Nations gathered to create the World Health Organization. A cholera epidemic that took 20,000 lives in Egypt in 1947 and 1948 helped spur the international community to action. The WHO published its Model List of Essential Medicines, and the 1978 Alma Ata declaration underlined the importance of primary health care. At a United Nations Summit in 2000, member nations declared eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which reflected the major challenges facing human development globally, to be achieved by 2015. The declaration was matched by unprecedented global investment by donor and recipient countries. According to the UN, these MDGs provided an important framework for development and significant progress has been made in a number of areas. However, progress has been uneven and some of the MDGs were not fully realized including maternal, newborn and child health and reproductive health. Building on the MDGs, a new Sustainable Development Agenda with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has been established for the years 2016–2030. The first goal being an ambitious and historic pledge to end poverty. On 25 September 2015, the 193 countries of the UN General Assembly adopted the 2030 Development Agenda titled Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Several major initiatives began in the 2000s, including the vaccine alliance GAVI in 2000, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in 2002, U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2003, and the U.S. President's Malaria Initiative in 2005. In this decade and as part of the Monterrey Consensus (which did not pursue goals as aggressively as many activists had urged), an increasing emphasis was put on measuring improvement in health outcomes, rather than merely the amount of money spent. In 2015 a book titled To Save Humanity was published, with nearly 100 essays regarding today's most pressing global health issues. The essays were authored by global figures in politics, science, and advocacy ranging from Bill Clinton to Peter Piot, and addressed a wide range of issues including vaccinations, antimicrobial resistance, health coverage, tobacco use, research methodology, climate change, equity, access to medicine, and media coverage of health research. Global health as a discipline is frequently regarded to be of imperial origin, and there have been calls for its decolonisation. The global health ecosystem has also been criticised as having a feudal structure, acting for a small group of institutions and individuals based in high-income countries which acts similar to an imperial "Crown".

Measures Measures of global health include disability-adjusted life year (DALY), quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and mortality rate.

Disability-adjusted life years

The DALY is a summary measure that combines the impact of illness, disability, and mortality by measuring the time lived with disability and the time lost due to premature mortality. One DALY can be thought of as one lost year of "healthy" life. The DALY for a disease is the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality and the years lost due to disability for incident cases of the health condition.

Quality-adjusted life years

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Global health

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Global health claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Global health before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Global health ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Global health

In research: Global health appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Global health in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Global health is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Global health, Global issues, Health education, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Global health outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Global health in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Global health means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Global health out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Global health in simple terms?

Why does Global health matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Global health?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Global health.