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.

October 2, 2026

GHECo Global Health Humanities Week | October 7–9

A series of three hour-long webinars will be held from 11am to noon 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. Register for the Zoom sessions at https://yale.zoom.us/webinar/register/4217849134630/WN_CkAflQ4FTG6ZTpkxT_C5-A#/registration

• October 7: “Planetary health and Indigenous artistic traditions: how indigenous art forms, oral histories, and land-based practices encode ecological and health knowledge”
• October 8: “Art as advocacy: how photovoice, body mapping, community murals, and performance art drive change in health policy and public understanding of health inequities”
• October 9: “One Health through an artistic lens: how artists, musicians, filmmakers, and storytellers illuminate the interconnection between human, animal, and environmental health”

Other Upcoming GHECo Events

We have an awesome set of events planned for the coming months! Registration details for all of the events below will be included in future newsletters.

• GHECo Virtual Teachers’ Lounge | October 15:  The next monthly GHECo VTL will be held on Thursday from 4pm to 5pm 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.
• CUGH Virtual Global Health Week | October 27–29: CUGH’s annual event will feature more than a dozen hour-long free webinars. The schedule and registration details are at https://cugh.org/conferences/vgh-week-2026. 
• 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.
• GHECo Educators Workshop  | 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!)

• EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION | October 5: CFHI is hosting its 3rd annual academic partner summit at 3pm New York time.  Learn more and register at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_uZ8JdzX2T5Kat7S77oW8Vg#/registration.
• PLANETARY HEALTH | October 6: Planetary Health Alliance is hosting a webinar on transdisciplinary One Health approaches to health in a changing world featuring Dr. Rafael Ruiz de Castañeda (University of Geneva) at 9am New York time = 3pm CEST.  Details and registration at https://planetaryhealthalliance.org/events/one-health-and-planetary-health-transdisciplinary-approaches-to-health-in-a-changing-world/
• SDGs | October 20: The Duke Global Health Institute is hosting a webinar on “Beyond the SDGs: What Did We Learn, and What Comes Next?” at 12noon New York time. Register at https://duke.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XG7yubu2SlKQ14vmDADZIA#/registration. 
• COLLABORATIVE GLOBAL LEARNING | October 26: The Community-Based Global Learning Collaborative is hosting an online conversation about ethical approaches to experiential learning at 12noon New York time.  Register for CBGL Collaborative events at https://wpi.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cRMo0Ny2tPrXApM. 
• CLIMATE CHANGE & DISPLACEMENT | October 29: The Global Health Institute of the University of Wisconsin–Madison is hosting a webinar at 10am New York time on climate change and global displacement. Speaker bios and a registration link are at https://ghi.wisc.edu/2026/08/18/global-health-tuesday-webinar-climate-change-global-displacement/.

New Publications in Global Health Education

• “Preparing current and emerging health leaders: an innovative competency-based framework for health diplomacy” was just published in PLoS Global Public Health: https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0004974
• Wellcome Trust has posted a new report on “A global health system fit for a new international order: proposals for change” at https://doi.org/10.21955/wellcomeopenres.1115448.1. “We propose three key shifts in the global health system: more selective external presence within countries; greater consolidation and alignment of external actors at country level; and consolidated structures at regional and global levels.”

CUGH Reflections in Health Competition

The CUGH Global Lens Forum: Reflections in Global Health is an annual opportunity to submit reflections about global health education, research, and practice.  The goal of the contest is to foster a culture of self-analysis, critical reflection, and cultural humility within the global health community.  Submissions may be a written essay, art, photograph, video, or may be multimedia.  Submissions will be reviewed by a panel and may be submitted in English or Spanish.  Top submissions will be awarded free registration to attend the CUGH 2027 conference in Peru as well as a small monetary award.  Submissions should be submitted here and are due November 22, 2026.  Contact Jenny Baenziger, MD (jbaenz@iu.edu) for questions.  

The annual Global Lens Forum is co-sponsored by CUGH, Child Family Health International, Indiana University Center for Global Health, Loyola University Chicago Center for Community and Global Health, and University of Pittsburgh Office of Global Affairs.

Upcoming Conferences

• APRU Global Health Conference 2026 in Hong Kong | December 7–9: Details about the Association of Pacific Rim Universities conference is at https://cuhk.aprughc2026.hk.
• Planetary Health Humanities | February 5-7: The Montreal-based collaborative research team Viral Conjunctures is hosting a hybrid (in-person in Montreal, Canada, and online) conference on “Geo-Medical Syndemics: Earthquakes, Geotrauma, and Mental Health in the Planetary Imagination” that will examine the multifaceted role the health humanities play in articulating and mitigating  the complex relationships between health, geology, past and current extractive energy regimes, and the planet’s anthropogenic transformations.  For more information, visit https://viral-conjunctures.com/cfps-2/.
• NCEAS online | February 22-23 online: The theme for this year’s conference of the (U.S.) National Collaborative for Education to Address the Social Determinants of Health (NCEAS) is “Beyond Screening: Preparing the Workforce for Action.”  Abstracts are due by October 30.  Learn more at https://sdoheducation.org/2027-nceas-annual-conference/.
• 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 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. Learn more and register at https://cughlima2027.org. 
• Association of Science Communicators in Chicago | April 8–9:  The annual meeting of ASC will be held in Chicago, USA.  Submit abstracts at https://www.associationofsciencecommunicators.org/conferences/science-talk-27/session-proposals/. 
• Planetary Health Alliance in Tokyo | June 7–11: The Planetary Health Annual Meeting (PHAM) will be held in Japan next June.  Details at https://smartconf.jp/content/pham2027. 
• International Council of Nurses in Taipei | July 8–11:  The next ICN Congress will be held in 2027 in Taiwan.  Abstracts are due by September 30.  Details at https://icncongress.org/events/icn-congress-2027. 

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.