Global Health Educators Community (GHECo)

GHECo is an international, multidisciplinary community of practice for global health educators that began hosting monthly Virtual Teachers’ Lounges (VTLs) and other events in September 2023. GHECo membership is free to everyone; CUGH membership is not required. To receive invitations to the monthly online GHECo meetings and special events, please sign up for the mailing list using the form. Questions about GHECo may be directed to the founding co-chairs, Kathryn H. Jacobsen (University of Richmond) and Caryl E. Waggett (Allegheny College)

To receive invitations to the monthly GHECo meetings and special events, please create an account. All global health educators are welcome to join the listserv and attend GHECo events. CUGH membership is not a requirement for participation in the community.

Values

Describe the history, values, and functions of global health.

Globalization

Explain how travel, trade, and other aspects of globalization contribute to health, disease, and health disparities.

Socioeconomics

Summarize the economic, social, cultural, and political contributors to individual and population health.

Environment

Examine the connections between human health and environmental health, including considerations of water, sanitation, air quality, urbanization, ecosystem health, and climate change

Ethics

Discuss the relationship between human rights and global health.

Healthcare Systems

Compare the financing and delivery of medical care in countries with different types of health systems and different income levels.

Governance

Examine the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of the agencies and organizations involved in prioritizing, financing, and implementing public health interventions locally and internationally.

Epidemiology

Compare the burden of disease, disability, and death from infectious diseases, reproductive health issues, malnutrition, noncommunicable diseases, mental health disorders, and injuries in countries with different income levels

Interventions

Identify evidence-based, cost-effective, sustainable interventions for promoting health and preventing illness across the lifespan from the prenatal period through older adulthood.

Evaluation

Evaluate policies that seek to solve major population health concerns and achieve health equity.

Earth System Changes

Identify the natural and human-generated causes of altered biogeochemical flows, climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental pollutants, land-system change, freshwater change, ocean acidification, atmospheric aerosol loading, stratospheric ozone depletion, and other global environmental changes.

Ecological Systems

Describe how the ecosystems formed by human, domestic animal, wildlife, plant, and other biotic populations are affected by human actions across trophic levels, geographies, and time.

Human Health Outcomes

Explain how extreme temperature and precipitation events, reduced air and water quality, population displacement, and other global changes increase incidence, prevalence, and mortality from infectious diseases; malnutrition; respiratory, cardiovascular, and other noncommunicable diseases; sexual and reproductive health issues; psychosocial health disorders; and injuries.

Risk Assessment

Analyze how economic, social, cultural, political, environmental, technological, and health systems affect ecosystem and human vulnerability and resilience to environmental change.

Governance

Evaluate how local, national, and international laws and policies have contributed to environmental problems and solutions.

Actions

Compare the roles and responsibilities of governments, the commercial sector, civil society organizations, communities, and individuals in promoting conservation, restoration, mitigation, and adaptation related to environmental change

Ethics

Articulate the principles of intragenerational, interspecies, and intergenerational environmental justice.

Communication

Demonstrate environmental and health literacy by accessing, evaluating, and communicating reliable scientific information about global environmental change.

August 22, 2026

Upcoming GHECo Events

We have an awesome set of activities planned for the coming months.  Many thanks to everyone who is participating in organizing, hosting, and attending these events!

• GHECo Virtual Teachers’ Lounge | August 27:  The next monthly GHECo VTL will be held on Thursday from 1pm to 2pm New York time. As always, all are welcome to participate in these no-agenda conversations about global health teaching, training, program management, advising, and mentorship. 
• GHECo Book Club | September 10:  Tom Frieden, former director of the U.S. CDC and current CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, was the featured speaker for a GHECo webinar on April 23 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOnr8RcOqJ0). Resources for teaching with his new book The Formula for Better Health are available at https://formulateaching.theformulaforbetterhealth.net/.  All educators who have read the book are invited to participate in an interactive conversation with Dr. Frieden on Zoom at 3pm New York time.
• GHECo Virtual Teachers’ Lounge | September 21:  The September VTL will be held on Monday from 9am to 10am New York time.
• GHECo–GLOHRA Research Competencies | September 24: GHECo and the German Alliance for Global Health Research (GLOHRA) Global Health Academy will be co-hosting an online dialogue about research competencies at 17:00–18:30 CET (= 11:00am–12:30pm New York time). 
  • Access GLOHRA’s Catalog of Competencies in Global Health Research at https://www.globalhealth.de/academy/competencies/. 
  • Learn more and register to participate in the conversation at https://www.globalhealth.de/news/view/dialogue-events-on-the-catalogue-of-competencies-gheco/
• GHECo Global Health Humanities Week | October 7–9: A series of three hour-long webinars will be held at 11am New York time, with each panel exploring ideas for drawing on the humanities to teach about global health. This webinar series is a collaboration of GHECo, the CUGH Global Health Humanities Working Group, and the CUGH Planetary Health-One Health-Environmental Health Working Group. The first session will focus on planetary health and Indigenous artistic traditions, the second on art as advocacy, and the third on One Health through an artistic lens.
• CUGH Virtual Global Health Week | October 27–29: CUGH’s annual event will feature more than a dozen hour-long free webinars. Students are invited to submit abstracts for research presentations using the form at https://members.cugh.org/atlas/forms/general/2012. The submission deadline is August 31.  Please invite your students to share their work!
• GHECo Webinar | November 5: Dr. Olusoji Adeyi, author of Global Health in Practice: Investing Amidst Pandemics, Denial of Evidence, and Neo-dependency (https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12520), will be the featured speaker for a special GHECo webinar at 11am New York time.
• Annual GHECo Educators Workshop @CUGH | 25 February 2027: As usual, GHECo will host an interactive workshop at the annual CUGH conference.  The workshop is free—conference registration is not required—but it is available only in person. Details at https://cughlima2027.org.
• Teach Global Health Summer Institute | 24–26 May 2027: This 3-day in-person workshop on curriculum and course design will be held in Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, USA.  Details at https://www.teachglobalhealth.org.

Other Upcoming Online Events (all are free!)

• FAIR TRADE LEARNING | August 28:  The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative is hosting a series of webinars and conversations in the upcoming months, including 30-minute overviews of the group’s work offered on August 28, October 15, and November 17 at 12pm New York time.  View all of the upcoming events at https://wpi.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cRMo0Ny2tPrXApM. 
• GLOBAL HEALTH EDUCATION | September 9:  The Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) will host a symposium celebrating the 30th anniversary of the tropEd network from 9:00-17:00 CEST.  A livestream of plenary sessions on transformational learning, innovating teaching methods, international collaboration in education, and AI and experiential learning will be available. Register for remote access at https://www.swisstph.ch/en/about/events/fki-symposium-2026 no later than September 2.
• DISINFORMATION | September 23:  The Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) will host a free webinar at 2pm New York time on “Preparing Students for Misinformation / Disinformation in Public Health.”  Register at https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ie35VpGvTNGY6G-qLpYqgg#/registration. 

New Publications in Global Health Education

• The 2nd edition of Global Health Governance and Policy: An Introduction by Eduardo Missoni, Guglielmo Pacileo, and Fabrizio Tediosi was just published by Routledge.  Details at https://www.routledge.com/Global-Health-Governance-and-Policy-An-Introduction/Missoni-Pacileo-Tediosi/p/book/9781032846538.  The authors will be hosting a GHECo webinar in January 2027.

Thanks for sharing your favorite podcasts!

• The Center for Global Health at the University of Chicago College of Medicine in Chicago has launched a new Better Together podcast for “global health students, trainees, and faculty who want to learn about best practices in global partnerships, research, education, capacity strengthening and service.”  Access all 19+ episodes at https://chicago.medicine.uic.edu/chicago-research/centers/center-for-global-health/better-together-podcast/.
• One Health Trust has posted 100 episodes of its One World, One Health podcast at https://onehealthtrust.org/news-media/podcasts/. 

Continuing Professional Education Opportunities

• The American Academic of Pediatrics (AAP) is hosting a 5-hour virtual Global Health Education for Equity, Anti-Racism, and Decolonization (GHEARD) training program on August 28 ($100).  Register at https://www.aap.org/en/catalog/categories/advocacy-and-international-health/gheard-from-learning-to-leading/.
• NAFSA, the Association of International Educators, has released a new three-course set of e-Learning courses about intercultural competence ($75–$270).  Learn more at https://www.nafsa.org/professional-resources/learning-and-training/intercultural-competence.

Upcoming Conferences

• World Health Summit 2026 in Berlin | October 11–13:  Registration for this annual event is open at https://www.worldhealthsummit.org/events/annual-whs/2026.
• Canadian Conference on Global Health 2026 in Montreal and online | October 16–18: Registration for this hybrid conference is available at https://cagh-acsm.org/ccgh/.
• APRU Global Health Conference 2026 in Hong Kong | December 7–9: Abstracts for the annual Association of Pacific Rim Universities meeting are due July 31. Details at https://cuhk.aprughc2026.hk.
• CUGH 2027 in Lima, Peru | February 25–28: The 2027 annual meeting of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) will be held in Lima, Peru.  Registration is already open, and the organizers are ready to assist participants with visa letters and other logistics.  The deadline to submit abstracts for posters and panels is August 31.  The annual GHECo educators’ workshop is scheduled to begin at 9am on February 25, so conference attendees should plan to arrive early enough to participate in morning workshops.  There will be a variety of special events for students and trainees, including student poster awards, and housing with local students in Peru will be available for international student attendees.  Learn more and register at https://cughlima2027.org.

Help us grow GHECo!

If you have colleagues and friends who are involved in global health education but are not yet on the GHECo mailing list, please invite them to sign up at https://cugh.groups.io/g/gheco. 

Do you have items for the GHECo Newsletter?

All of the items in this newsletter have been shared by GHECo members.  Thank you for your contributions!  Please email information about upcoming events and new resources related to global health education to kjacobse@richmond.edu and cwaggett@allegheny.edu so that we can share them in the next GHECo newsletter.