INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL HEALTH AND HEALTH POLICY

The Institute for Global Health and Health Policy (IGHHP) is dedicated to exploring the increasing links between human, animal and ecosystem health through the development of interdisciplinary collaborations that empower solutions to the increasingly complex challenges to global health. Sophisticated problem-solving in the service of equitable and sustainable wellness on a global scale demands the collective engagement of professional disciplines that have historically operated in relative isolation, including public health, medicine, veterinary medicine, agriculture, economics, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, ethics, public policy and others. With attention to innovative educational, research and policy initiatives, it is the aim of IGHHP to foster creative, trans-disciplinary approaches in the pursuit of global wellness.IGHHP is an affiliation of several initiatives whose core mission is to promote education, research and policy in the field of Conservation Medicine – a discipline that explores the connections between human, animal and ecosystem health by seeking the root causes of contemporary declines in global wellness. Training efforts in the form of workshops currently focus on veterinary students (e.g., www.marvet.com), with plans to incorporate other professional disciplines such as medicine, public health, animal science, public policy, socioeconomics, ecological economics, agricultural economics and cultural anthropology - all of which are relevant to the complexities of wellness strategies in the global context. A central thematic aim is to introduce students from multiple disciplines to each other at early stages in their careers to showcase the importance of a team approach in formulating solutions to health problems that cannot be achieved within the confines of a single profession. Targeted research efforts currently focus on the use of microbial genomic methodologies to track the spread of those genes that convey resistance to antimicrobials – genes that are threatening the efficacy of antimicrobials worldwide at an accelerating pace. The overarching mission of IGHHP is, therefore, to adopt a broad-based, interdisciplinary, systemic approach to population and environmental health education, research and social policy that is actionable on a global scale.