Global Health Educators Community (GHECo)
The CUGH Global Health Educators Community (GHECo = “gecko”) provides professional development and networking opportunities for professors who teach global health courses, design curricula and experiential learning activities for nonclinical undergraduate and graduate programs, and oversee baccalaureate majors and minors, academic master’s degrees, and research-based doctoral degrees.
Committee Information and Resources
Membership
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)
Events
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.
Global Health Learning Objectives
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.
Planetary Health Learning Objectives
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.
Newsletter
June 1, 2026
GHECo Virtual Teachers’ Lounges | June 3
The June GHECo VTL will be held this week on June 3 (Wednesday) from 10am to 11am New York time. Register at https://urichmond.zoom.us/meeting/register/fLlL_ENNSxaFqVnoYiCNEw. As always, all are welcome to participate in these no-agenda conversations about global health teaching, training, program management, advising, and mentorship.
Teaching with Global Health NOW
GHECo is partnering with Johns Hopkins University’s free weekday newsletter Global Health NOW (https://globalhealthnow.org/subscribe) on a special issue on teaching with GHN that will be published in August. If you have been using GHN with your students/mentees or have ideas for how to use GHN to support teaching, learning, and professional development, please email your ideas to cwaggett@allegheny.edu and kjacobse@richmond.edu (and let us know if you are willing to have your submission attributed to you in GHECo/GHN communications or if you would prefer to remain anonymous).
Upcoming Online Events (all are free!)
- PLANETARY HEALTH | June 2: The European Planetary Health Alliance is hosting a webinar at 15:00 CEST with Dr. John Gittleman about what One Health means and how the concept has evolved. Learn more about the theme of ecology and medicine at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1005042 and https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2413367121. Register for the webinar at https://meet.goto.com/974179357.
- HEALTH COMMUNICATION | June 16: Nature Health is hosting a webinar on “Global Perspectives on Health Information Quality and Trust” at 12pm New York time. Register at https://www.choice360.org/webinars/global-perspectives-on-health-information-quality-and-trust.
- SDGs | June 23: The UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) is hosting a webinar to launch the 11th annual Sustainable Development Report at 1pm CET (= 7am New York time). Register for the launch event at https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/7117764322121/WN_TL_0d9d_QLS1_Dn49lr_XQ#/registration.
Student Competition from Operation Outbreak
This fall, Operation Outbreak is launching a student competition in which teams will take on real-world biosecurity challenges through a series of classified “operations.” Students will collaborate with classmates and a faculty sponsor to investigate community preparedness, compete for rewards, and unlock new challenges as they go. Registration for the Mission Biosecurity Student Competition is already open. Watch the trailer and sign up for updates at https://operationoutbreak.org/competition/.
GHECo Book Club with Tom Frieden | 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. A recording of the webinar can be accessed at 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/. Next up: Anyone who reads the book in the next few months is invited to participate in a GHECo “book club” conversation with Dr. Frieden on Zoom on September 10 at 3pm New York time. Save the date, and start reading!
Upcoming Conferences
- GLOHRA Annual Symposium in Berlin | June 26: Free registration for the in-person annual symposium of the German Alliance for Global Health Research is available at https://www.globalhealth.de/news/view/save-the-date-glohra-day-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 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. Sessions begin at 9am on February 25, so attendees will want to arrive in time for morning workshops. Learn more 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.