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Global Health

Population Health Field
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The branch of public health concerned with the health of populations worldwide rather than within any single country. The World Health Organization's Health Promotion Glossary of Terms 2021 defines it as achieving health equity at a global level by addressing the transnational health issues, determinants, and the interventions and formal structures which are beyond the control of the institutions of individual countries. Its scope therefore reaches cross-border threats such as pandemics alongside the worldwide distribution of the conditions that shape health, and its defining commitment, on the WHO's framing, is that equity in health belongs to all people worldwide.

Facts
Central Question
How can the transnational determinants of health be addressed so that people everywhere, regardless of the country they live in, can attain equity in health? 1
Key Debate
A single university-based research institute, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, now produces the Global Burden of Disease estimates that guide much global health funding and policy, a role historically associated with the World Health Organization itself; whether an independent academic institute or the United Nations health agency should be the authoritative source for global health statistics is a live institutional debate. 2
Key Debate
Global health is widely regarded as having grown out of the colonial era international health tradition, and scholars have called for its decolonization, describing the field's own ecosystem as functioning like a feudal structure serving a small group of high income country institutions. 3
Key Debate
Global health's own defining methodological dispute is whether limited funding should run vertically, targeted at single diseases with easily measured results, or horizontally, strengthening the general health systems that every disease-specific program ultimately depends on. Vertical programs are easier to fund and to show dramatic results from, but critics hold that they create parallel funding and management structures, distort national health priorities and do little to strengthen the overall health system, which in turn has been blamed for slow progress on health goals such as maternal and child mortality that depend on strong general services. A proposed diagonal approach, pursuing disease-specific goals by means that also strengthen the wider health system, has been offered as a reconciliation, but the underlying tension over how global health money should be spent remains unresolved. 4
Connections

Associated With

Source Wikipedia: Global Malaria Eradication ProgrammeWikipedia contributors
Source Wikipedia: Global Polio Eradication InitiativeWikipedia contributors
Source Wikipedia: Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic FilariasisWikipedia contributors
Source Wikipedia: Guinea Worm Eradication ProgramWikipedia contributors
Source PMC: Welcome to Implementation Science (Eccles and Mittman, 2006)
Source Wikipedia: Measles & Rubella PartnershipWikipedia contributors
Source Wikipedia: Onchocerciasis Control ProgrammeWikipedia contributors
Peter Piot, Figures

Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the Ebola virus, was the founding Executive Director of UNAIDS from 1995 to 2008.

Source Wikipedia: Health Emergencies Programme

The paper's definition is credited with marking global health's naming shift away from the older term international health.

Source The Lancet: Towards a Common Definition of Global Health (Koplan et al., 2009)

In Branch

Source Health Promotion Glossary of Terms 2021

Includes

Source Wikipedia: Christopher J.L. Murray
Source Wikipedia: Expanded Programme on Immunization
Source Wikipedia: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Source The Lancet: Towards a Common Definition of Global Health (Koplan et al., 2009)
Source Resolve to Save Lives: Dr. Tom Frieden Biography
Sources
1. Health Promotion Glossary of Terms 2021
World Health Organization, 2021
  • Entry: Global health
    Achieving health equity at a global level by addressing the transnational health issues, determinants, and the interventions and formal structures which are beyond the control of the institutions of individual countries.
  • In Branch: Public Health, Entry: Global health, scope
View the Source
2. Wikipedia: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Wikipedia
  • Lead section
    The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is a public health research institute of the University of Washington in Seattle.
  • Includes: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
View the Source
3. Wikipedia: Global Health
WikipediaHistory section
Quote, History section
Global health as a discipline is frequently regarded to be of imperial origin, and there have been calls for its decolonisation.
View the Source
4. The diagonal approach to Global Fund financing: a cure for the broader malaise of health systems? (Ooms et al., 2008)
Globalization and Health (BioMed Central), 2008Background section, opening
Quote, Background section, opening
The potentially destructive polarisation between vertical and horizontal financing of health services in developing countries has found its way to the pages of Foreign Affairs and the Financial Times.
View the Source
LSHTM Website
London School of Hygiene and Tropical MedicineAssociated With: London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Introducing LSHTM, global health researchView the Source
Wikipedia: Expanded Programme on Immunization
WikipediaIncludes: Expanded Programme on ImmunizationView the Source
Wikipedia: Christopher J.L. Murray
WikipediaIncludes: Christopher J. L. MurrayView the Source
Resolve to Save Lives: Dr. Tom Frieden Biography
Resolve to Save LivesIncludes: Resolve to Save LivesView the Source
The Lancet: Towards a Common Definition of Global Health (Koplan et al., 2009)
The Lancet
  • Includes: Publication of Towards a Common Definition of Global Health
  • Associated With: Publication of Towards a Common Definition of Global Health
View the Source
PMC: Welcome to Implementation Science (Eccles and Mittman, 2006)
Implementation Science (BioMed Central), via PubMed CentralAssociated With: Implementation ScienceView the Source
Wikipedia: Health Emergencies Programme
WikipediaAssociated With: Public Health Emergency PreparednessView the Source
Wikipedia: Global Malaria Eradication Programme
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Global Malaria Eradication Programme
Wikipedia: Global Polio Eradication Initiative
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Global Polio Eradication Initiative
Wikipedia: Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Guinea Worm Eradication Program
Wikipedia: Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Global Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis
Wikipedia: Onchocerciasis Control Programme
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Onchocerciasis Control Programme
Wikipedia: Measles & Rubella Partnership
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationAssociated With: Measles & Rubella Partnership
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