Table 2.
How global health has been defined by academics since 2009
| Year | Reference | Author | Definition |
| 2009 | 1 | Koplan et al | Global health is an area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. Global health emphasises transnational health issues, determinants and solutions; involves many disciplines within and beyond the health sciences and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and is a synthesis of population-based prevention with individual-level clinical care. |
| 2009 | 56 | Janes and Corbett | Global health is an area of research and practice that endeavours to link health, broadly conceived as a dynamic state that is an essential resource for life and well-being, to assemblages of global processes, recognising that these assemblages are complex, diverse, temporally unstable, contingent and often contested or resisted at different social scales. |
| 2010 | 20 | Beaglehole and Bonita | Our proposed definition for global health is collaborative transnational research and action for promoting health for all. |
| 2010 | 22 | Bozorgmehr | The field is about building and rebuilding, researching and analysing, teaching and learning the links between social determinants of people’s health anywhere in the world. |
| 2010 | 49 | Crump and Sugarman | Multiple disciplines and multiple activities take place under the umbrella of global health including in the clinical, public health, research and education arenas. |
| 2010 | 50 | Frenk et al | Global health is the goal of improving health for all people in all nations by promoting wellness and eliminating avoidable disease, disability and death. It can be attained by combining population-based health promotion and disease prevention measures with individual-level clinical care (US Institute of Medicine, 2009). |
| 2010 | 27 | Fried et al | Global health and public health are indistinguishable. Both view health in terms of physical, mental and social well-being, rather than merely the absence of disease. Both emphasise population-level policies, as well as individual approaches to health promotion. And both address the root causes of ill-health through a broad array of scientific, social, cultural, and economic strategies. |
| 2010 | 51 | Haffeld et al | The term ‘global health’ implies a globally shared responsibility to provide health as a public good through an expansive number of initiatives. |
| 2010 | 76 | Lakoff | Global Health is a contested ethical, political and technical zone whose contours are still under construction. |
| 2011 | 46 | Arthur et al | Global health issues of the modern world require coordinated multisectoral, multidisciplinary and multinational efforts to achieve effective resolutions to new multidisciplinary multinational health challenges produced by globalisation. |
| 2011 | 70 | Brada | ‘Global health’ is an argument, a position, as much as, if not more than, a thing-in-the-world. The terms of ‘global health’ are best understood as chronotropic, and demonstrate how actors orient themselves and others spatio-temporally, morally and professionally |
| 2011 | 89 | Redwood-Campbell et al | The 11 defining values and principles for global health are: social justice, sustainability, reciprocity, respect, honesty and openness, humility, responsiveness and accountability, equity and solidarity. |
| 2012 | 23 | Campbell et al | The primary characteristics of a global health definition—that it crosses borders, has a multitude of causes and involves a range of means and solutions—imply the need for multiple professionals and disciplines in addition to medical professionals… but may not always be needed. A multidisciplinary approach is often, but not always, needed and beneficial and is therefore not an essential component of the field of the definition. |
| 2012 | 78 | Peluso et al | The definition of global health must be rooted in health equity and focus on the collaborative and multidisciplinary nature of global health, with an emphasis on cross-cultural interactions. |
| 2013 | 86 | Garay et al | We articulate principles that should apply to collective action on global health. These three principles are health for all (for all people worldwide), health by all (by a representative range of stakeholders and actors) and health in all (multisectoral efforts to increase health, with special attention to social determinants of health). |
| 2012 | 32 | Rowson et al | Global health is a field that is characterised by vast differences in the phenomena that can be studied, stretching from economic, political and social relationships to biological processes and even to the technologies that deliver health-sustaining resources such as water, sanitation and agricultural improvements. |
| 2013 | 94 | Farmer et al | Global health is not yet a discipline but rather a collection of problems. The authors of this volume believe that the process of rigorously analysing these problems, of working to solve them and of transforming the field of global health into a coherent discipline demands an interdisciplinary approach. |
| 2013 | 25 | De Cock et al | The New Global Health concerns health in all countries and encompasses poverty alleviation, universal health security and delivery of appropriate public health and clinical services, including for the increasing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases. |
| 2013 | 33 | Margolis | Global Health cannot be defined precisely, but several different authoritative bodies have agreed on key elements to a valid definition. These four key elements—(1) equity, (2) global preventive medicine, public health and primary care, (3) cross-cultural sensitivity and (4) interaction of medicine and supporting disciplines, for example, anthropology, engineering, healthcare administration, agriculture, etc.,—can be used to guide curriculum development. |
| 2014 | 45 | Aluttis et al | Worldwide improvement of health, reduction of disparities, and protection against global health threats (The European Commission, 2009). |
| 2014 | 95 | Haines & Berlin | The term ‘global health’ describes the phenomenon of determinants of health transcending national boundaries due to unprecedented growth in international travel, global trade and investment, and an increased flow of information and technology having a pervasive impact on the determinants of health, the spread of disease and the functioning of health systems |
| 2014 | 31 | Kuhlmann | (T)he term ‘global health’ seeks to convey that health issues are universal, that health issues transcend national boundaries, and that diseases can and often do spread quickly (and often without respect for political boundaries) |
| 2014 | 60 | Nascimento et al | Global Health, formerly ‘International Health’, involves numerous aspects of health policies, epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis and therapy for neglected diseases and is not restricted to low resource regions. It is supported by four main bases: (A) clinical decision based on data and evidence; (B) population-based rather than individual focus; (C) social goals; (D) preventive rather than curative care. |
| 2014 | 91 | Rowthorn and Olsen | Global health is by definition and necessity a collaborative field; one that requires diverse professionals to address the clinical, biological, social and political factors that contribute to the health of communities, regions and nations. |
| 2014 | 43 | Steeb et al | Similar to public health, global health focuses on preventive measures, population-based care and health equity, including social and economic determinants of health. |
| 2015 | 26 | Engebretsen and Heggen | By adding ‘global’ to ‘health’, we presume that there is a universal health standard. Thus, global health both alludes to supranational dependency within the health field and refers to a norm or vision for health with global ambitions. It implies a homogenisation of a world view of health with someone in the role as Cosmotheros (world viewer). |
| 2015 | 87 | Gostin and Friedman | Global health entails ensuring the conditions of good health—public health, universal health coverage and the social determinants of health—while justice requires closing today’s vast domestic and global health inequities. |
| 2015 | 35 | Marten | Whereas public health acknowledges the state as a dominant actor, global health recognises the rise of other actors like international institutions, civil society and the private sector affecting health and health policies transcending states. |
| 2016 | 21 | Benatar | Global health, appropriately understood as an ecocentric concept, embraces the idea of healthy people on a healthy planet. This notion goes beyond anthropocentric considerations on health to include the importance of the interconnectedness of all life-forms and human well-being on an ecologically threatened planet. |
| 2016 | 67 | Wernli et al | We propose here a definition of global health based on six core principles: (1) cross-border/multilevel approach, (2) interdisciplinarity/transdisciplinarity, (3) systems thinking, (4) innovation, (5) sustainability and (6) human rights/equity. |
| 2016 | 68 | Wilson et al | We define global health as health problems, issues and concerns that transcend national boundaries, may be influenced by circumstances or experiences in other countries and are best addressed by cooperative actions and solutions. |
| 2018 | 75 | Havemann and Bösner | Global health comprises aspects of (tropical) medicine, international health, public health and other disciplines. Additionally, it includes global aspects in the sense of ‘global as supraterritorial’. |
| 2018 | 28 | Horton | Global health is not about equity. It is about power. |
| 2018 | 59 | Mews et al | The following three core elements form a working definition of global health and constitute an innovative and necessary perspective for medical education: health as a human right; global perspective; interdisciplinarity |