What does “the movement for global health equity” mean to you?
by Jill Shah on October 24, 2011
Welcome to the inaugural globalhealthU blog post!
globalhealthU is GlobeMed’s Global Health Education and Leadership Development Curriculum – that’s a mouthful, we know. Essentially, at weekly staff meetings, each GlobeMed chapter follows the yearlong curriculum put out by the National Office. Over the past year, we overhauled the structure of globalhealthU to accommodate the feedback we received from chapter members last year. For our new-and-improved program, we cut out pre-readings and included more small group discussions to enable a nuanced, holistic exploration of the ties between poverty and health.
We want to begin a dialogue across the entire network: maybe you’re a chapter member following the curriculum; maybe you’re an alumnus furthering your participation in global health; maybe you’re a supporter of GlobeMed invested in the nurturing of future leaders. Whoever you are, we want to hear your voice – and we want you all to hear each other. Throughout the year, the National Office globalhealthU Team will blog about the current Track. Using our thoughts and questions as a launching point, we hope you all will continue this discussion on Facebook.
GlobeMed chapters spent the first three weeks of this school year gaining a foundational understanding of GlobeMed. During the first week, we listened to the stories of GlobeMed’s formation, which illuminated the values behind our model of deep and lasting partnership. Then, every chapter member had the opportunity to share the crux of their core values through composing a This I Believe Statement. In the second week of globalhealthU, we delved into the breadth of our network of 46 chapters, partners in 18 countries, a National Office, a Board of Directors, donors, supporters, peer organizations, and many more amazing individuals. With a more complete understanding of GlobeMed’s key players, we zoomed outward during the third week in Global Health 101. We traced five phases of the history of global health, set the context for GlobeMed’s work, and considered how our work will fit into this history. These first three weeks laid the informational groundwork for critical discussion and conversation throughout the rest of the year of globalhealthU.
After learning about our history, our organization, and our broader movement, we also want to consider our personal values, and ultimately how they connect, confront, and strengthen GlobeMed’s values. At the National Office Staff Retreat this past weekend, we took the time to deeply consider our own values and were privileged to hear our peers disclose their beliefs. Each of us was challenged to articulate why we were sitting in that room and to grapple with our personal orientations to this work. As GlobeMedders, we spend a lot of time talking about ‘we’: we believe that students can enact significant changes; we believe in the power of solidarity and partnership; we believe that health is a human right.
Now, we want to hear from the individual voices that make up this ‘we’. With excitement and respect, we pose the following questions:
What does ‘the movement for global health equity’ mean to you? Who is a part of this movement?
Many hugs,
GlobeMed National Office globalhealthU Team
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