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In this MA program, global health is considered to be much more than and very different from international public health. It emphasizes that major health challenges stem from many factors well beyond disease itself --- factors that are cultural, ecological, evolutionary, historical, institutional, social and technological.

Any effective, sustainable solutions to the most pressing global health challenges need to take all of these factors into account, including the complex ways in which they relate to each other. In this manner, this degree program teaches students to understand health as not simply a product of disease, but rather emerging in the contexts of complex and interrelated ecology, politics, history, culture, social institutions and evolutionary biology. It also places primacy on how to address the broader (i.e., structural, cultural) bases of ill health in complicated, ever-changing health challenges in low-resource community settings and a globalizing world. To do this, the program combines both social and life science theories with on-the-ground research and its application. There is a strong emphasis on collaborative action as key to identifying and addressing global health problems in a sustainable and meaningful way.

Students accepted into the program are tied to ongoing transdisciplinary global health projects that address complicated, multifaceted health challenges that defy easy fixes, such as climate change-related diseases, emerging infectious diseases, and obesity.

By applying a collaborative, problem-solving format, the master's degree program in global health is intended to provide those planning to enter health or related fields (i.e., environmental, social) with the transdisciplinary orientation, team skills and social and cultural acuity that the Pew Health Professions Commission inter alia has identified as critical but lacking in current health workforce training. The program also emphasizes experiential learning as a way to gain mastery and requires participation in a global internship program based in one of the international partnering communities.