The Global Health concentration prepares students to confront complex issues primarily impacting resource-poor populations around the world.

Understanding and confronting global health issues often require transdisciplinary approaches that integrate multiple sectors working together for solutions. Strategies focus on vulnerable groups such as pregnant and lactating women, infants, young children, adolescents, internally displaced persons, refugees, persons with disabilities and older adults.

The concentration provides students with knowledge about major infectious and chronic diseases, and other conditions. Students learn to deconstruct and analyze mainstream development discourse and develop an understanding of the root causes that lead to health outcomes. Students also create program and policy solutions to address global health problems.

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Concentration requirements

  • Global Health (3 credits)
  • Transdisciplinary problem solving course (3 credits)
  • Policy, Politics and Power in Global Health (3 credits)
  • Practicum with a global health focus (3 credits)
  • One elective course (3 credits)

Transdisciplinary problem-solving course options include:

  • TPS: Global Hunger & Undernutrition
  • TPS: Implementing Public Health Interventions in Developing Countries (taught abroad)
  • TPS: International Family Planning and Reproductive Health
  • TPS: Protection of Women and Children in Humanitarian Settings

Global health-focused electives include:

  • International Social Development Theory
  • Global Anti-Poverty Interventions
  • Development Practice in International Settings
  • Global Burden of Disease
  • International Child Welfare

In addition, students are strongly encouraged to choose global health-related skill labs.

Practicum

Students in the Global Health concentration must complete their practicum experience in a low- or middle-income country. Students who enter the concentration with at least one year of experience in a low- or middle-income country may pursue their global health-focused practicum within a high-income setting such as the U.S. that has been approved as a core affiliated site. Students in this concentration have completed practica at sites such as:

  • International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD) at the Brown School
  • Maji Safi Group – Tanzania
  • Vitendo4Africa
  • E3 Nutrition Lab

Concentration chair

Jessica Backman-Levy, PhD

Jessica Backman-Levy, a professor of practice at WashU Public Health, investigates how to best measure and operationalize the ways in which gender dynamics influence global health and development. Currently, her work is based in Jordan on a project that aims to improve gender equality and family planning outcomes.

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Join us in our commitment to building a healthier world for all.

The application for the Master of Public Health program must be completed through the Schools of Public Health Application Service (SOPHAS) – the centralized application service for public health. You must designate your chosen MPH program under Washington University in St. Louis – School of Public Health within the SOPHAS program finder.

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