GlobeMed at Wash U Celebrates Global Health Week

Written by Micaela Atkins, Washington University St. Louis Chapter 

This week at Washington University’s St. Louis campus, students are decorating sunglasses, throwing paint and playing carnival games all in the name of global health. 

April 17^th through the 23^rd marks GlobeMed at WashU’s second annual global health week, a weeklong consortium of awareness events and fundraisers organized by the GlobeMed members for the WashU community. 

The slogan for the week, “What is YOUR lens?” challenges students to think critically about how they view the world, and the context in which global health issues are addressed. Dylan McLaughlin, a junior member, says of the week, “We’re really proud of our members for stepping up and taking initiative to come up with innovative ideas to attract students to our events.” These inventive new efforts, like decorating sunglasses during a discussion of different “lenses” for contemplating health issues, are definitely seeing success.  Junior Claire Henderson commented, “I really love how GlobeMed has provided an open forum of discussion for all students, no matter whether they’re interested in medicine, anthropology, history, art, etc. GlobeMed has found a way to tie global health issues into all fields and has made these issues tangible to everyone- all while incorporating fun activities!”

The week began with the campus’s first ever “Global Getdown,” a paint party hosted by GlobeMed in partnership with a campus fraternity. Highlights from the rest of the week included a “flash mob” where GlobeMed members blasted a popular song as they dispersed into the crowed dining hall and handed out fliers for the week’s events, a panel on economic development as a means of addressing health disparities, and a roundtable discussing Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

On Wednesday, a “mock clinic” in the courtyard of the student center allowed students to participate in GlobeMed’s events on a personal level. David Westrich, the event’s organizer, stated, “The mock clinic was a great way to raise awareness about easily preventable treatable diseases that plague the developing world. As participants spun the “Wheel of Misfortune, ” and were assigned a daily wage and disease they got an idea about how little control people in the developing world have over their health.”

For the rest of the week, students are looking forward to a screening of Food Inc co-hosted with a campus environmental group, and the “Global Marketplace”, a carnival-esque array of games and activities that both relate to health and provide fundraising opportunities for the chapter.

“Global Health Week has been extremely important for GlobeMed’s presence on campus,” said Co-presidents Devika Bagchi and Elizabeth Riley. “Though we’re still a young chapter, this year has definitely been a year of huge growth for us and this week has been the culmination of our efforts and a tangible representation of how far we’ve come as a student organization.”