What does global health focus on?

5 Focuses of Global Health

When it comes to the globalization of our economy and our society, we often run into issues with public health and humanity. The impact that our culture and society have on our individual health has been extensively researched, with five major focuses to answer the question: What does global health focus on?

  • Communicable Disease Outbreak: One of the most major concerns of global health professionals remains the spread of infectious diseases. When there are epidemics of viruses or major health concerns on a global scale, it can affect policies on travel and possible quarantine of heavily exposed groups. This is usually of greater concern when children are involved, such as the Zika virus or other communicable diseases that cause major birth defects in predominantly low-income areas.
  • Access to Basic Healthcare: While many Americans assume that basic healthcare and access to competently trained doctors is a common way of life, this often isn’t the case. Global health also entails the lack of health resources in third-world countries due to lack of infrastructure.
  • Food Safety and Availability: Another factor affecting public health on a global scale remains to be famine, drought, and lack of sanitation surrounding food. The more access third-world communities have to educational resources on water and food storage and preparation, the greater the increase in global health as a whole. Nutrition is also a very key factor of global health, as malnourished people are more susceptible to illness.
  • Noncommunicable Diseases: While noncommunicable diseases such as diabetes or heart disease are not a reason to fear the spread of a pandemic, the prevalence of these types of non-infectious disease can give a lot of information regarding the quality of life of people in national communities that do not have access to health information and education. Reducing the prevalence of these types of disease can help reduce the number of fatalities in entire communities, especially in low-income areas of the world.
  • Political or Natural Disasters: An extremely important focus of global health includes addressing the health needs of politically vulnerable people, such as refugees from war crises, or those whose homes have been drastically affected by natural disasters. These types of disasters can facilitate a plethora of issues with sanitation, exposure, and disease that might otherwise not have such a great effect on a certain population.

When it comes to global health, these factors affect every community in different ways. Until the opportunities for education and aid can reach communities on a global scale, insufficient health will affect economies of not only those communities or nations, but also the world economy as a whole.