Globalization has spurred explosions in trade, investment and migration and produced a complex set of health challenges for the world’s populations. Treatable and preventable diseases are devastating developing nations, chronic illnesses are on the rise, and infectious diseases are rapidly re-emerging.
Meanwhile in Oregon we are welcoming a growing number of immigrants and refugee groups from countries around the world. In the process, our local health care professionals are being presented with new and, until recently, rare health conditions and sociocultural dynamics. Meeting these challenges at home and abroad will require professionals endowed with new skills and novel perspectives. In our profoundly interconnected and fragile world, everyone’s health will depend upon their ability to think globally — wherever they practice.
Such issues were recognized and articulated by the students who coalesced around promoting global health awareness. Ultimately the interest and enthusiasm engendered by the students’ activity in collaboration with faculty and staff from various OHSU institutes culminated in the founding of an interdisciplinary OHSU Global Health Center – to facilitate global health education, research, practice and advocacy across OHSU, and to promote quality and equity in health care.
Today the Center has a small footprint at home. With your help, it can have a big impact across the globe.
We are actively seeking public and private funding to promote and coordinate global health education, research and practice across OHSU and beyond.
Education
Private support will allow the center to implement innovative programs to train dental, medical, nursing and pharmacy students in global health concepts early in their training. These critical activities will help future professionals understand how worldwide forces shape human health, how development impacts health, and how diseases can rapidly spread across the globe. Students will develop the cultural understanding and clinical skills to assist all comers, including refugee-citizens from distant lands.
Research
Supporting a spirit of inquiry, discovery, and analysis within the realm of global health research is a primary focus of The Center. Investments across the health services research landscape can have far-reaching impact. For example, poliomyelitis, a disease both feared and poorly understood in the past century, continues to resist that final step of global eradication. Contrast the catastrophic human suffering and dollar toll of caring for polio victims with the low cost of readily delivered vaccine that prevents the disease. It was not always that way: at the time of its discovery, polio vaccine was a preventive innovation yet to be confidently realized. Compelling contemporary examples of diseases that seriously burden our world require comparable vision, professional dedication, and resources. HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are the most visible examples. Yet, morbidity and mortality related to environmental degradation, occupational and chronic diseases, food insecurity, and inequitable access to quality health care expand the possibilities for concerned health-oriented professionals to apply themselves. At OHSU, our mission includes stimulating a strategic research agenda amongst students, researchers, and faculty to address these 21st century challenges.
