The Growing Field of Global Health: New Challenges and New Opportunities

In a new post on the Guardian’s Global Development Professionals network, Global health is growing in prominence – now what?, Alanna Shaikh, a leading health and international development blogger, writes about the growing field of global health. Throughout the post, she explores important questions about the new challenges and opportunities that accompany the growth.

From the post:

Global health is changing – both in policy and practice. Thanks to new funding sources and some scary new health problems, it has got far more attention in the past decade than in the years before. People are more aware of global health issues now and the field is also growing in size, expanding far beyond its roots in tropical medicine and vaccinations. Pneumonia is a global health problem now, as are mental health disorders, and miscarriage.

Global health’s prominence, however, also creates challenges. How do you keep up? Distribute your resources? If everything is a global health problem, does that devalue the whole concept? How do we know what really matters when so many things are global?

Here’s one way to look at it: global health is more like a lense than a field. It’s a way of looking at health holistically, for the entire planet. It focuses on linkages – between individuals, communities and nations, and among health topics.

Read the full post here.