Global health is public health. You only have to look at something like the COVID-19 pandemic to realise that the health of all living organisms is just one interconnected system. Global health can also very easily fall into a very fragile state when it does not receive the proper investment, care and attention, as the COVID-19 outbreak has also illustrated.

During my undergraduate studies, I became increasingly interested in looking after my health and, by extension, I started to become more knowledgeable about the field of public health. I was going to incorporate my increasing interest in achieving optimum health into my MTA Portfolio and, because Global Citizenship was already a concentration, it became obvious that I should also add a module on global health. 

Studying global health also gave me another lens through which to understand the concept of systems thinking: when view systems from a broad perspective that includes seeing overall structures, patterns and cycles in systems, rather than seeing only specific events.

Then COVID-19 came along and gave me an even more immediate lens through which to understand the systemic nature of global health. This is why, long after I thought I had finished with this module, I came back to it and added a few extra courses about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Some of the courses in this module already covered the topic of pandemics and, while I honestly didn’t see COVID-19 coming, I certainly wasn’t surprised when it did turn up. All the leading experts have been saying for years that we have been overdue a pandemic and now that COVID-19 has arrived, it only illustrates the vital importance of maintaining the wellbeing of our shared global health system.