Global Health Education Opportunities

We're the university-wide enterprise that recognizes health as a fundamental human right. So we're elevating research education and service to address health inequities that primarily affect the poor and underserved and also to train this next generation of global health leaders. The Act Institute for Global Health provides Notre Dame students with various opportunities and helps them build essential skills through immersive experiences that foster collaboration and authentic engagement in global health. As we say at Notre Dame, it's doing global good. Everybody can find their place within a global health program because it's so interdisciplinary. Global health is the elimination of global health inequities all over the world. That also includes local. A lot of people, when they hear the word global or international, they think, oh, that's outside the U.S. borders. I think what makes this club stand out is just the fact that it brings together students from all disciplines, pre-med, business, philosophy, or romance languages. It creates a really nice opportunity for students to learn what global health really means and to understand how various disciplines matter for global health events. Students in the club get the chance to engage in meaningful dialogue with their peers and other global health experts through speaker events, through workshops, panels, and through service learning. The students that I'm lucky enough to work with in the global health minor are intensely curious, which is wonderful because anything you're interested in, I can figure out a way that it connects to global health. We need anthropologists. They understand culture. They learn about language. We need business people that can help us figure out how to raise money, how to form partnerships with foundations, private organizations. Students that are interested in sustainability and climate change, it's important for them to know the impacts that climate change has on health. They come, they have such enthusiasm. What can I do? What can my impact be? And that is so inspiring to me. Students that come into this program, I think, often have to have some sort of drive where you work with things like malaria, schistomiasis. We have researchers that work with students on maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases. There's just a whole spectrum of things within health that students can get involved with and make a difference both locally and internationally. We have a student, for example, that came in as a radiologist tech, and now he's doing his PhD in biological sciences. He's just a stellar student and a great example of how you can come in with very little experience but shine. The students that are attracted to global health tend to be the students that really want to make an impact for good on the world. And I think it's also a testament to how Notre Dame students are innovative, curious, and mindful as they engage in global health. We're a Catholic institution. We integrate compassion, ethics, different things that you may not find within the core curriculum at another MSGH program. I always tell students you don't actually need a passport to do global health. You know, encouraging students to look beyond just where they're sitting, to look out at the rest of the world. And I consider that one of the incredible gifts and strong points of a Notre Dame education.