Center for Global Health
Putting people first
The promise of global health requires us to address some of the most complex and difficult challenges facing humans. Sustainable solutions will need to address not just the medical, but also the complexly inter-related social, cultural, political, ecological, and economic challenges we face in a globalized era. Our research, training, and outreach efforts in global health are about understanding and supporting communities as the identify and manage the health challenges they define as priorities. Located in the school that has the nation’s foremost research-intensive anthropology program alongside the nation's largest global health undergraduate training program gives us a unique means to build global health solutions that put people first.
Each year our center pushes forward one ground-breaking and important theme that we believe can reinvent and reimagine how we do global health.
Center Theme 2026: GLP-1 drugs and weight loss: Centering User’s Perspectives
Led by CGH affiliate and public health scholar Fernanda Scagliusi, our goal is to bring together social scientists doing research across the globe to identify challenges related to off label user experiences, needs and concerns around the new GLP-1 (“weight loss” drugs). Predicted to transform health care profoundly, potential and current users are reportedly struggling with unaffordability, supply chain shortages, denied insurance coverage, lack of clear data and medical guidelines for how to manage longer-term use, and complex inter-personal and cultural issues like deservedness and “cheating.”
Banner Image Credit: Map of health. Odra Noel. Source: Wellcome Collection. Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)