Foundations of Global Health Practice

An essential introduction to global health in the modern world

Foundations of Global Health Practice offers a comprehensive introduction to global health with a focus on ethical engagement and participatory approaches. With a multi-sectoral perspective grounded in Sustainable Development Goals, the text prepares students for engagement in health care and public health and goes beyond traditional global health texts to include chapters on mental health, agriculture and nutrition, water and sanitation, and climate change. In addition to presenting core concepts, the book outlines principles for practice that enable students and faculty to plan and prepare for fieldwork in global health. The book also offers perspectives from global health practitioners from a range of disciplinary and geographic perspectives.

Exercises, readings, discussion guides and information about global health competencies and careers facilitate personal discernment and enable students to systematically develop their own professional goals and strategies for enriching, respectful, and ethical global health engagement.

• Understand the essential concepts, systems, and principles of global health
• Engage in up-to-date discussion of global health challenges and solutions
• Learn practical skills for engagement in health care and beyond
• Explore individual values and what it means to be an agent for change

Prevention, cooperation, equity, and social justice are the central themes of global health, a field that emphasizes the interdisciplinary, cross-sector, and cross-boundary nature of health care on a global scale. As the world becomes ever smaller and society becomes more and more interconnected, the broad view becomes as critical as the granular nature of practice. Foundations of Global Health Practice provides a complete and highly relevant introduction to this rich and rewarding field.

Author Information

Lori DiPrete Brown has been engaged in global health education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 14 years, where she serves as a Distinguished Faculty Associate in the School of Medicine and Public health and the School of Human Ecology. She is an Associate Director of the Global Health Institute at UW-Madison. DiPrete Brown began her career as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras, where she lived and worked in a residential program for teenage girls who had been orphaned or abandoned during childhood. Her subsequent global health practice, research, teaching, writing and public speaking has focused on providing quality health care and social services that address the needs of women, children and all people who are in highly vulnerable situations. DiPrete Brown has worked extensively with international agencies including the U.S. Peace Corps, USAID, the Pan American Health Organization, WHO, Care, and Save the Children. She has collaborated to strengthen systems of care 15 countries around the world including Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, Cameroon, and Ethiopia. DiPrete Brown holds degrees from Yale University, the Harvard School of Public Health, and the Harvard Divinity School. In 2012 she was awarded the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Dean’s Teaching Award for her contributions to global health education.