IAG-NZGS 2014* The Place of Geography in Global Health Education. (14240)
Global health is a broadly used, but poorly defined, subject that spans multiple disciplines. Housed primarily in medical schools, global health education tends to focus on experiential learning opportunities that encourage students from affluent medical schools to travel to resource-poor settings to practice in clinic. This presents numerous ethical concerns. Resource-poor settings are effectively transformed into teaching spaces for well-paying students. Dependency forms between the clinic and the affluent medical school. Under-qualified students put into precarious scenarios where they are expected to provide essential care. This paper draws attention to these ethical concerns and argues that greater adoption of social science, and specifically geographies of development, into the core curriculum is greatly needed. By focusing programs more towards issues of inequity and social justice, global health education could have a greater role in promoting social advocacy for health for all, rather than maintaining rigid inequities between the global North and the global South.
