Global Health Definition. What Are Its Vital Components?

Healthful Vitality | 09/29/2021 | By NP Editorial Team | Global Health Definition

There may be many nations in the world, but humanity is one. Thus, a need to develop a unified understanding of global health strategy. In addition, there is a necessity to come up with similar guidelines for teaching, policymaking, and practicing health care.

The pandemic of covid-19 infection has just highlighted the importance of global health. It also underscored that human are now better connected than ever. Moreover, it means that developed economies would be influences by the prevailing health issues in the developing nations.

Global health has a single goal of improving healthcare globally. Nonetheless, there is still a lack of one single definition. It is still an emerging concept.

Its most accepted definition was given by Koplan et al., which states that global health is:

 ‘An area for study, research, and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving health equity for all people worldwide.’

Key Features of Global Health

Indeed, global health has many key features. It focuses not just on the healthcare sector but on improving population-wide health with the involvement of all the sectors. Thus, we list below some of its vital components.

Some of the Vital Components of Global Health:

Collaborative

Collaborative means the emphasis of collective effort on all the health issues, with a particular focus on major global health issues, and not just on local issues.

Trans-national

Trans-national means that healthcare should be a global concern. It means looking beyond the boundaries of nations. It may not mean better cooperating with neighboring countries, solving regional health issues more efficiently. Trans-national requires the strengthening of public health institutions.

Research

Research is what drives the progress in healthcare, and yet most of the research is done by a limited number of countries. Therefore, there is a need for different nations to participate in healthcare research. Moreover, many health issues cannot be managed with broader global participation. That is why it still takes much longer to overcome some health conditions that are very much manageable.

Action

Here, ‘Action’ means acting on the evidence-based action plan. It may mean having similar kind of well-established action plans globally.

Promoting

Promoting means promoting healthcare or healthy lifestyle strategies, not only globally but through all the sectors in any given nation.

Health for all

A self-explanatory, meaning that health benefits should reach various sections of the society in an equal manner.

Admittedly, the global health concept is facing some challenges. Perhaps the biggest challenge is that most of the centers developing this concept are located in the developed nations. They are located in countries where healthcare is quite well and is more accessible to various parts of society.

However, a greater burden of preventable diseases is in the low- and middle-income countries. These countries may benefit significantly from the experience of developed economies. Nonetheless, it appears that the global health concept has failed to reach much of the developing world.

There could be various reasons for such disparities. However, experts believe that there is an urgent need to popularize the concept of global health in developing economies. In addition, there is a need to establish global health centers where they are needed most. Only this way, global health initiatives can reach their goals.

(Related: 5 Biggest Threats to Global Health Progress)