In 1997, the U.S. Institute of Medicine identified global health as ‘health problems that are influenced by circumstances in certain countries, but have effects that could impact other nations.’ With globalization becoming such a prominent part of life economically, socially and politically, it is a clear progression that health problems will become “globalized” as well.

Global health scholarships are revolutionizing research that students can do for issues worldwide and helping to create new solutions and strategies for a variety of illnesses. There are many organizations that award global health scholarships, but three large groups are Johns Hopkins University, the American Medical Student Association, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Johns Hopkins University founded the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health in 2006; it is comprised of the Bloomberg School of Public Health, the School of Medicine, and the School of Nursing.  This year, the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health awarded eight scholarships to students to give them the resources needed for them to pursue solutions to international health issues. Current scholarships winners are hoping to use their scholarships to monitor international health policies, achieve sustainable surgical care in developing countries, conduct infrastructure research in East Africa, facilitate community health programs, train people for public health interventions to prevent the spread of infectious diseases and increase global vision health care.

The American Medical Student Association (AMSA) has a six month long program that AMSA members, who are medical, pre-medical and public health students, can apply for. The program’s purpose is to create new solutions to help the global health outcome of developing countries.  Topics covered by this program are how to meet Millennium Development Goals, what exactly global health is (epidemics, new diseases, communicable diseases), and the impact climate change and population growth have on global health.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation also gives global health scholarships in the form of grants. The Gates Foundation gives billions of dollars to help fight global issues and within the last year they awarded $17,819 to The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine to support HIV research being done in Thailand. They also awarded $240,005 to the Center for Disease Control to work in India to create vaccines for enteric diseases and $356,650 to King George’s Medical University to help with pediatric pneumonia in India.

– Olivia Hadreas

Sources: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Johns Hopkins, AMSA