Welcome to the Department of Global Health and Population (GHP). My name is Marcia Castro, I serve as Chair of “GHP” and I am pleased to have this opportunity to welcome you to our department’s web site and introduce you to our work. As a community of students, educators, researchers, and practitioners from around the world, our department works together to produce powerful ideas that improve the lives and health of people everywhere.
We are privileged to be the first department of population sciences in any school of public health with a focus on global health from the very beginning. For more than 50 years, faculty members, students, and researchers in our department have helped shape the field, and launched some of the major ideas in global public health and population sciences. Our alumni are part of a strong network of public health experts working to devise, implement and evaluate effective strategies that improve the lives of millions of people around the globe. We have welcomed students and fellows from most countries in the world, and our trainees have gone on to do great things – as ministers of health, leaders in national and international public health organizations, and scholars in academic institutions.
Through our master’s and doctoral degrees, the Department of Global Health and Population is home to students developing expertise in areas such as health systems design, management, and evaluation; health economics; global nutrition; maternal and child health; global infectious and non-communicable diseases; and humanitarian studies and population ethics. Our research and teaching has a unique foundation in what we call global health methods – including competency in various quantitative and qualitative methods that we apply to the study of various problems and solutions. Our faculty works continuously to strengthen our educational offerings, to stimulate new research, and to build an intellectual community. Our array of term-time courses, winter-term and summer international experiences, and special events offer a comprehensive portfolio of learning opportunities for our valued student and postdoc community.
GHP today enjoys strong partnerships with the FXB Center on Health and Human Rights and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, and is home to the Takemi Program on International Health, the Women & Health Initiative, and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative. Of particular note are our regional initiatives, the China Health Partnership, the India Health Partnership, and the Africa Health Partnership, which allow special emphasis on some of the world’s regions that face particular public health challenges and that have shown innovations in addressing these challenges.
I invite you to explore the many opportunities for participating in the work of the Department of Global Health and Population throughout the year. To those of you in the Boston area, please join us for our weekly seminar series, held each Thursday throughout the term. These seminars are a wonderful way to learn about the wide variety of programs in which we are engaged. I refer you to our online calendar for further details.
From research and teaching in Boston and other parts of the US, to Brazil and Mexico; from China and India, to Tanzania and Egypt, our programs and projects span the globe in more than 30 countries. Thank you for joining us at the Department of Global Health and Population in working towards advancements in the field of global health.
Marcia Castro, Chair
