Global Health and Diabetes

Global health is defined as “health problems, issues, or concerns that transcend national borders” (Institute of Medicine, 1997, p. 2). Koplan (2009) proposed a new definition for global health which he described as an “area for study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide” (para, 7). Global health emphasizes transnational health issues, determinants, and solutions from an interdisciplinary perspective and blends population health and clinical care.

Global health means many things to many people. In the world view of this writer, global health describes the study of the health needs of the global community and its effect on the world as a collective. From this writer’s viewpoint, for global health to be successful it must strive to ensure health for all and be built on the core principles of social justice, grounded in science, focused on prevention and control of diseases, and linked to governments and public policy (Merson, Black, & Mills, 2006). This writer is aware of the need to improve the health of the global community and hopes to use this paper to do the following: (a) Elaborate on why this writer was drawn towards a global health career and discuss plans for her future in this area, and (b) Discuss the pressing issue of global diabetes and propose remedial actions that could be implemented during this writer’s global health career.

The desire to work in global health has been a long term dream of this writer. However, after deep introspection, the decision to pursue global health as a career stemmed from sense of obligation and the need to give back to the community. Growing up in the West Indies in the 1960s, this writer’s parents lik...

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