Perspective on Global/International Health

When I first heard the term international health, my perspective was drawn to the outcry of financially starved health services in the developing world.  However, Beaglehole et.al., discusses International health as that which focuses on the health issues, especially infectious diseases, and maternal and child health in low-income countries, while Global health is collaborative trans-national research and action for promoting health for all. Both focus on health of the population and community so why the separation or need to identify the purpose of one or the other. This separation and need to have a definition make it seems like what we are basically saying is we are are looking at it from a developed (international) versus developing (Global health) perspective.  International health seems to focus on the premise that health is not something to worry about on the same scale and that of countries like in Sub-Sahara Africa.  This to me is a fallacy, because there are some places in the United States and other developed countries that has health disparities and issues worse than that of the developing world.  The major factor in any health disparity is income inequalities, and this is a worldwide problem.

The definition by Rowson in the Bozorgmehr article which states that, Global health is a field of practice, research and education focused on health and the social, economic, political and cultural forces that shape it across the world”, is more palatable to me because it doesn’t center on developing or developed but on the need to look at all the factors that are affecting the health and basically the wealth of nations.  There are great doctors in developing and developed countries and having an international focus says I’m coming to help you and tell you how it should be done instead of partnering with and collaborating on sustainability, prevention and interventions. We can agree to start from here and decide how we are going to partner with other countries in global health.