Global Health vs. International Health

There seemed to be a common theme among the readings echoing the idea that global health has become known as a uniting practice that breaks down some of the limiting aspects of the works so closely associated with national government. As the two readings about ‘International Health’ focused on how, in the past, efforts to improve the overall health of nations in need involved tedious processes performed by the main actors and agencies in the international health communities. These actors and agencies, tending to be private PPPs and NGOs functioning on their own agendas, were among the much larger actors such as the multilateral institutions like the World Bank and US government. However, with the increasing number of the smaller entities in the foundation and private sectors that are attempting to assist in the improvement of whatever health aspects they may be interested in there lies the issue of undemocratic agenda-setting.

Over the historical progression towards a more ‘global’ oriented health paradigm for partnerships and organizations around the world to focus on it seems that there has been a slow deterioration of the universally aligned topics of global health priorities and understandings regarding the underlying determinants of people’s health. With the development of so many small-scale organizations tending to have different goals in what they want to accomplish regarding people’s health there is the issue of the likelihood of these initiatives to fail in achieving long-term health improvements for their desired regions. However, since the progression towards a more global oriented perspective on health has emerged it seems that there has been a deepening of the understanding of the patterns of health across the globe along with their social, political and economic determinants. This is a theme, I feel, that is very important to the idea of global health and its affiliation to the people of the global rather than the people of individual nations.

In regards to global health it seemed that in the articled describing the differences between international and global health there was a pivotal moment for the idea of global health. By that I mean the period of time when “the first World Health Assembly met in Geneva in June 1948 and formally created the World Health Organization. The Office Interna-tionale d’Hygiène Publique, the League of Nations Health Organi- zation, and UNRRA merged into the new agency.” In accompany to that “Milton and Ruth Roemer argued that further improvements in “global health” would be de- pendent on the expansion of public rather than private health services. Another strong source for the term “global health” was the environmental movement, especially debates over world environmental degradation, global warming, and their potentially devastating effects on human health.” These two events stood out to me in regard to the progression toward global health and away from international health with a focus on the totality of people’s health and the determinants which effect it. 

I know this image is a bit cheesy but i feel that in conveys the idea of global health becoming a uniting practice involving to totality of people around the globe rather than having a focus from nation to nation.