Academic Global Health is Dead - by With & For

There’s a truth many of us in academic global health have been considering for a while but rarely say out loud: Is the era of academic global health—as we’ve practiced it— over? And if it isn’t, should it be? We’ve built programs, institutes, careers around the promise of “global health.” At places like UCSF (where I am based), we’ve spent the past two decades training clinicians, researchers, and technical experts committed to serving vulnerable communities around the world. And much of that work mattered immensely. Global health - as a scholarly enterprise -has had a transformative impact Thanks for reading mike’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. But somewhere along the way, that enterprise may have begun to eclipse its mission. Have we stopped asking what global health was for, and focused instead on how to sustain it? Rather than staying rooted in service, solidarity, or systems change, has the field become too preoccupied with itself, with mai

There’s a truth many of us in academic global health have been considering for a while but rarely say out loud: Is the era of academic global health—as we’ve practiced it— over? And if it isn’t, should it be? We’ve built programs, institutes, careers around the promise of “global health.” At places like UCSF (where I am based), we’ve spent the past two decades training clinicians, researchers, and technical experts committed to serving vulnerable communities around the world. And much of that work mattered immensely. Global health - as a scholarly enterprise -has had a transformative impact Th