Global Health Focus Grows at Harvard

From South America to Sever Hall, Tracy T. Han ’11 has synthesized her interest in the sprawling field of global health into a comprehensive four-year plan of study.

“Global health as a field is incredibly interdisciplinary,” Han says. “One of the problems that people find is that global health is this hodgepodge of topics. I’m trying to stick it all together.”

In the past few years, global health has become an increasingly popular topic of study on a national scale. As evidenced by a growing number of global health-related courses and organizations, Harvard is no exception to this trend, though no academic concentration in the field is available.

From working on frog leg regeneration in Chile, to examining water project pilot protocols in the Dominican Republic, to studying rural Chinese medicine, Harvard undergraduates interested in global health issues are devising their own ways to delve into the field—even in the absence of an institutionalized department.

These students say they have used their creativity and initiative to gain theoretical and practical understandings of global health in order to make contributions to the field.

FINDING THEIR WAY

Inspired by her freshman seminar on child health in America, Han worked to design a special concentration in global health, supplementing it with courses in sociology.

Midway through her sophomore year—shortly after declaring her special concentration—Han left Harvard to further pursue this interest, spending four months of spring 2009 in Bangladesh, where she helped develop a pilot protocol for ridding water of arsenic and bacteria.

The experiences “got me to see public health working in another country,” Han says, adding that she was able to see “the application of what she had been learning” term-time.

Like Han, Michael T. Henderson ’11 also created his own special concentration. After taking Harvard Medical School Professor Paul Farmer’s class on global health the fall of his sophomore year, Henderson says that he “couldn’t get enough.”

By the following term, Henderson had decided not to concentrate in human and evolutionary biology. This semester, he created his own junior tutorial, which was taught by Patrick T. Lee, a clinical instructor in medicine at HMS.

Henderson emphasizes the human dimension of his global health coursework and research.

For whatever region of the world he focuses on, Henderson says that he aims to “really [see] the society and the people in the culture, and [take] that in.”

Henderson adds that he practiced this objective last year in a self-designed study. Traveling to Peru and China, he researched the perception of illness between traditional and Western medicine.

But according to Henderson, he hasn’t created a path only for himself. Instead, he says he has worked on developing inclusive opportunities for students interested in global health. To that end, last fall Henderson founded The Harvard College Global Health Review, an undergraduate student publication that “aims to raise the levels of both scholarship and awareness in relation to issues within the realm of global health,” according to its website.

And currently, Henderson is designing a January-Term trip to Honduras, which he says will be an “educational experience” for interested students.

RISING POPULARITY

Henderson calls global health “sexy.” Han says it’s the “hot topic.” And both students point to globalization’s contribution to global health’s fad appeal.

Jeffrey B. Low ’11, who serves as president of Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum, attributes the popularity to global health’s interdisciplinary nature.

“There’s truly something for everyone,” he says. “You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to have a Ph.D. to make a difference.”

But others say that structural changes in Harvard’s curricula are, in part, the cause behind students’ increased interest in Global Health.

Rebekah Getman, the program manager for the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, points to the launch of the General Education program as fostering an “uptick in student interest” in the field.

Gen Ed has given Harvard a “platform to address global health in a way we haven’t been able to before by encouraging more broad-based classes and innovative teaching techniques that allow a faculty member...to bring what she does over at the Harvard School of Public Health [for example] to the undergrads,” Getman says.

But according to David Cutler, a professor in applied economics noted for his work on the economics of health, the global health scene at Harvard was starkly different just a few years ago.

“There was almost nothing a student interested in global health could do in terms of studying it formally at Harvard,” Cutler says. “We had very few courses. There were faculty interested but they weren’t brought together in any serious way.”

Recently, the field has also enjoyed the support of University officials.

“[University President] Drew Faust’s two biggest priorities are global health, and energy and the environment,” Cutler says.

Cutler adds that this priority has been manifested in the growing number of global health-related courses taught by faculty ranging from Law School to Medical School professors.

But these courses are becoming more than just a mix of elective classes.  Next year, the secondary field in health policy—which was first approved in 2007—will become a joint public health and global health secondary, according to Deborah L. Whitney, the executive director of the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy.

THE FUTURE

Research and extracurricular opportunities in global health have grown in tandem with course offerings. The Harvard Initiative for Global Health, the Harvard College Global Health and AIDS Coalition (HCGHAC), the Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum, and the Harvard Project for Sustainable Development are among the most visible newly established student organizations at the College.

Still, opinions vary on the possibility of global health becoming its own concentration.

Since the field is inherently interdisciplinary, Cutler says he does not think it would make sense as its own concentration. He adds that it is important for students to have a “firm foothold” in a discipline while cultivating a subject area of interest.

“The answer is not to flood us with more classes,” says Krishna M. Prabhu ’11, a member of HCGHAC.

Rather, Harvard’s efforts should go towards research on neglected diseases with the aim of benefitting the mostly impoverished people who suffer from such diseases, Prabhu adds.

But both Han and Henderson say there is value in having a concentration devoted to global health.

There is still a “real need to connect the experiences students have in the classroom with experiences students have on the ground,” Han says.