In this MA program, global health is considered to be much more than, and very different from, international public health. It emphasizes that major health challenges stem from many factors well beyond disease itself --- factors that are cultural, ecological, evolutionary, historical, institutional, social and technological.

Any effective, sustainable solutions to the most pressing global health challenges need to take all these factors into account, including the complex ways in which they relate to each other. In this manner, this degree program teaches students to understand health challenges not simply as a product of disease, but as emerging in the contexts of complex and interrelated ecology, politics, history, culture, social institutions and evolutionary biology. It also places primacy on how to address the broader bases of ill health (i.e., structural, cultural) in complicated, ever-changing health challenges in low-resource community settings and a globalizing world. To do this, the program combines social and life science theories with on-the-ground research and its application. There is a strong emphasis on collaborative action as key to identifying and addressing global health problems in a sustainable and meaningful way.