The Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health: Transcending Borders for World Health

Abstract

The causes and effects of many health problems, whether infectious, environmental, lifestyle related, or caused by manmade or natural disasters, are becoming increasingly global in nature. Integrated approaches to solving these problems require the expertise of large and diverse groups of health professionals, to design lifesaving research and to implement effective responses. The Johns Hopkins University public health, medical, and nursing communities have a history of leadership in both modern medicine and public health, and they have unparalleled human resources in the clinical, research, programmatic, policy, and educational domains, with an extensive network of international colleagues and collaborators. To best utilize these resources to have a positive impact on global health issues, the university created the Center for Global Health in 2006 to facilitate and coordinate the various international activities of the faculty and students in the field of global health. The center has seven specific initiatives aimed at educating students and facilitating the faculty's collaborative research: serving as a resource center for global health activities within the university; facilitating and coordinating topical areas of global research; promoting educational programs in global health; providing global health field training grants; granting global health scholarships; focusing on global health research and practice; and coordinating symposia, forums, and policy initiatives. The author elaborates on these initiatives and discusses challenges experienced in establishing the center, as well as evaluation methods for determining the center's success.