1. Gender terms and concepts

What is the Difference Between Sex and Gender? Sex is the classification of people as male or female. At birth, infants are assigned a sex based on a combination of bodily characteristics including: chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, and genitalia.  For example: Parents, family, and friends are often eager to learn the sex of a baby. Gender is […]

Global Health case studies

Case study Determinants of healthJean Baptiste Case study Newborn and child healthNasir Case study Gender and sexual and reproductive health 101

10. Non-communicable diseases

With improvements in survival to adulthood, improved economic and political states, and development of global markets of food and products has come changes to human behavior, exposure, and risks. As morbidity and mortality from communicable diseases has fallen, death from cardiovascular diseases and cancer have become the most common causes of death of adults in […]

9. Communicable diseases

We’ve all just lived through a pandemic. A global, life-changing, system-changing pandemic. Outside of world-wide conflict, it’s hard to think of something other than communicable diseases that have such a direct impact on the global population. Historically, the field of global health emerged from the study of “tropical diseases”—mostly infectious in nature that were of […]

8. Newborn and child health

As you may have noticed so far, children are a key population in the study and work of global health. In many ways, the health of children in a population/country/region acts as an indicator. Health and lives of children are intricately linked to economic access and particularly susceptible to the effects of poverty and inequalities. […]

7. Women’s and maternal health

Women, as a group, experience unique health problems by nature of their position in society. Historically, women have been subject to unjustifiable discrimination and unequal opportunities in wealth; and given inextricable links between wealth/poverty and health, they experience unequal health problems. In many places, women’s most important role is functional creation and maintenance of the […]

6. Nutrition in low-resourced settings

You may be well-aware of the pathophysiology of things like macronutrients, vitamins, and digestion, and have probably witnessed the health effects of abnormal nutrition and its effect on metabolism in the United States (such as diabetes and obesity). On the global scale, especially in resource-poor settings, issues in nutrition—undernutrition and malnutrition—have deep and far-reaching effects […]

5. Ethics in global health

At this point in the course, it should be evident that global health work is a complex and multidisciplinary endeavor that tackles interdependent social and physical conditions and involves differences in priorities, power, and resources; there are inherent ethical concerns. “Global health ethics” is a poorly defined term that can refer to human rights (such […]

4. Socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental determinants of health

Socioeconomic determinants: Learning objectives List major social and economic determinants of health and their impacts on the access to and quality of health services and on differences in morbidity and mortality between and within countries Discuss connections among health, cost of illness, and impact of health expenditure on poverty and health outcomes Read Do Apply […]

3. Health systems in global health

In your medical training, you have learned in depth and through experience the structure and function of the U.S. health system, and perhaps explored some comparisons to the health systems in other wealthy nations. The structure and function of a health system is frequently related to or reflects health policy and can have major role […]