The Department of Health Administration and Policy (HAP), Faculty of Public Health (FKM), Hasanuddin University (UNHAS) held a guest lecture on Friday, March 15, 2024. This activity was held in hybrid; offline in Prof. Dr. Noer Nasry Noor, MPH room and online in a zoom meeting. This guest lecture invited an international speaker from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University Bhubaneswar, India, Dr. Manas Ranjan Behera, MPH, DrPH on “Global Health-Key Concepts and Guiding Principle”. This guest lecture was led by Suci Rahmadani, SKM, M.Kes, a lecturer at the HAP Department. Most of the participants were UNHAS students of undergraduate, Magister and Doctoral Programs in The FPH.
Prof. Sukri Palutturi, SKM, M.Kes., M.Sc., Ph.D (Dean of FKM) in his welcoming speech expressed his gratitude to Dr. Manas and expected that the participants would use this opportunity to improve their knowledge on global health issues. Dr. Manas Ranjan Behera, MPH, DrPH started the presentation by sharing about the history of global health. As a significant part of national strategy in economic globalization, security and international policy, the United States’ global health has stimulated international collaboration to confront the medical and health challenges through global funding, development assistance, capacity building, and education. Dr. Manas also mentioned that global health has three fundamental tasks. Furthermore, He also explained about the types of global health research, such as “how to judge whether a research study is global or not.”
Dr. Manas also explained examples related to global health include projects or studies that involve many countries with diverse backgrounds or include large and diverse populations located in the region. It could involve huge and various populations located in a geographically wide area, for example, during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic and control in Hong Kong. Even though it started locally, SARS presented a global threat, as did epidemic control. At this international guest lecture, we learned that global health is different to public health or medical health. It is rather an emerging sub-discipline within the field of public health. Global health is not only for all medical and health problems but also for problems that have a global impact and with the aim of finding global solutions. Besides, global health is mainly focused on large medical and health problems transcending geographical, cultural, and national boundaries and seeks solutions from the board, including frameworks, partnerships and cooperation, policies, implementable laws and regulations through governments, social media, communities, and other large and broad outreach mechanisms.
To sum up his presentation, Dr. Manas mentioned that we had to acknowledge the obvious overlaps between global health, public health and medicine, especially between global health and international health. It would be pointless if global health were to be considered an extension of international health in terms of its focus and purpose. International health focuses on the health of participating countries with a view to influencing non-participating countries, whereas global health directly states that its goal is to improve health and prevent and treat disease for all people in all countries around the world. The guest lecture ended with a photo session.
