Defining Global Health

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-06-01 16:43:00 UTC
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(Photo credit: Peter Blanchard)

I've mentioned this before, but one of the challenges to working in global health, and to writing a broad-ranging blog like this, is figuring out where to stop. There are some interesting philosophical issues that tie into that. Health affected by so many different factors, and affects so many things itself, that global health can easily turn into pretty much everything on the globe.

I am not going to get into that right now. I'm not in the mood. I'll take a shot at it soon, but I want some help first. I'll give you my list of what I see as possible global health issues that I could blog about. You answer in the comments as to whether you think it's really a global health issue.

1. Landmines. Yes, they do damage health in a visceral way. But landmine deaths and injuries are not reduced in any traditional medical or public health way. Well, unless you count behavior change that trains people to avoid them.

2. Water and Sanitation. This strikes me as a pretty clear yes on the global health link, except that water issues rapidly transition over into resource management, economics, hydroelectric power, and the environment. Maybe diarrhea is a health issue, but water isn't? Except that sounds insane.

3. Literacy. Education in general and literacy in particular has a powerful impact on health status. More powerful than many health interventions. But, like landmines, literacy has little to do with traditional global health tools.

4. Climate Change. It's going to have a hideous effect on human and animal health, globally. But should something as drastic and all encompassing as climate change be stuck into a category like global health?

One way to approach this problem is to go ahead and call it all global health. When we do that, though, we run the risk of fatigue. If everything is a global health crisis, you just tune them all out.

Alanna Shaikh
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