Global Health and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change

• Global Health Degrees 
• Study Abroad and Internships
• Research Themes and Projects
• Global Health Faculty
• Partners and Collaborators 

A Global Perspective

Global Health in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change refers to our coordinated efforts in research, instruction and service to create sustainable community and population-level quality of life improvements that reach across political, social and geographic boundaries.

To us, global health is much more and very different from public health. We understand that major health challenges stem from many factors well outside of disease – ecological, cultural, institutional, historical, evolutionary, social and technological. Any effective, sustainable solutions to our most pressing global health challenges will need to take all of these factors into account, including the complex ways in which they relate to each other. To do this, we apply cutting-edge methods and theories from the social and life sciences, including anthropology, mathematics, genetics, history, human biology, sociology and geography.

Our focus is especially on addressing those problems that have proved most intractable to standard public health approaches, such as:

• neglected and reemerging infectious diseases,
• obesity and food insecurity,
• childbirth complications in low-resource settings and
• climate change-related disease.

Ill health is often created or exacerbated by power imbalances, poverty and other forms of social exclusion. A commitment to the principles of social justice and of community-centered and community-serving research is evident in everything we do. We focus our efforts in specific partnering communities located around the world – such as Paraguay, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Mexico and Fiji – and work on health issues they define as critical. But a concern for a just and healthy world starts at home, so we also work locally in Phoenix, with our city's most vulnerable residents, many of whom are migrants from around the world.

We have an ambitious and coordinated research agenda, energetic faculty, innovative degrees and a range of outstanding international programs and coordinated research and internship opportunities for students.

We are also working on a plan for a new Center for Global and Community Health. If approved, the center would act as a place to develop and sustain projects and partnerships as we work to meet the challenges of improving the human condition in an increasingly global, complex and unequal world.

Other initiatives relevant to Global Health at ASU that complement our efforts include those in the Biodesign Institute, the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, the W.P. Carey School of Business and the College of Nursing and Health Innovation.