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Global Health Matters

May - June, 2009  |  Volume 8, Issue 3

Global health definition offered

A panel of leading figures in the field is offering a new definition of the term "global health."

Writing in The Lancet, the authors, representing the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, offered for universal adoption the following:

"Global health is an area for study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. 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."

Members of the consortium, most of them Fogarty grantees, will meet at the NIH in September.

Koplan JP, Bond TC, Merson MH, Reddy KS, Rodriguez MH, Sewankambo NK, Wasserheit JN; for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health Executive Board. "Towards a common definition of global health." Lancet. Volume 373, Issue 9679, 6 June 2009-12 June 2009, Pages 1993-1995