According to Jeffrey Koplan, MD, MPH, and colleagues from the Consortium of Universities for Global Health in their commentary in The Lancet, “The global in global health refers to the scope of problems, not their location. Global health has to embrace the full breadth of important health threats.”
The authors have offered a definition of global health that is crucial in these times of global health risks.
Global health risks run the entire gamut of encompassing health issues that affect the populations of the planet. They include, among others: climate change, epidemic infectious diseases, tobacco control, obesity, and migrant-worker health.
These issues have undeniably been affecting people from all corners of the globe. This definition of global health does make health concerns genuinely global.
Health authorities and practitioners the world over would do well to approach health issues on this global scale for global health to be truly ensured, as well as for the academe and media to use the same definitions.
A global approach to health, as founded on a general and uniform definition, will greatly aid the mitigation of health threats and risks, no matter how complex or geographically diverse. This approach will also see a global pooling of expertise and resources that will solve the root causes of health threats, and in a more consistent and sustainable manner.
Thus, for the authors, ‘global health emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and solutions; involves many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration; and is a synthesis of population-based prevention with individual-level clinical care.’
Via Science Codex
