Global Health

The Global Health approach is based on a vision of health as a state of biopsychosocial wellbeing and a fundamental human right in its widest sense and implementation.

This means that:

• Global Health is not a new discipline or (just) a field of study, it is an integrated research and action approach;
• health and disease are considered to be the outcome of processes that are not only biological but also economic, social, political, cultural and environmental;
• pursuing Global Health means taking a position in favour of equity and social justice at local and international level.

Global Health is said to take a “broad view”, along two main axes:

• geographical, since it analyses the interdependence between local and global phenomena (in both the North and South of the world)
• multidisciplinary, because it incorporates many contributory disciplines, besides the health ones (social and human sciences, economics, law, etc.).

Although the Global Health approach originated in the public health domain, it can be applied to
both health promotion and disease prevention and care, at the individual or population level.

Read the full definition of Global Health by RIISG.