Watch on YouTube

7:18

What global health means, and why equity is in the definition

Global health takes a global perspective on public health problems, and the definition we use puts equity at its center: improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide. Equity has a precise meaning. The World Health Organization calls it the absence of unfair, avoidable or remediable differences among groups of people. Avoidable carries the weight, because these gaps follow from decisions about who gets access to resources, and from the circumstances in which people are born, live, work and age.

Also covered: Interdisciplinary collaboration · Health disparities · Social determinants of health · Directed acyclic graph · Vaccine apartheid