Excerpt from the Dickey Center’s announcement launching the Global Health Institute

Since its inception, Dartmouth has fostered through its liberal education the development of all of its students towards lives of global citizenship. Global health represents the highest obligations of global citizenship and its challenges will require these students be drawn from a variety of academic disciplines and interests.  To this end, under the leadership of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding and the faculties of the Dartmouth Medical School, the Tuck School, the Thayer School and the Arts & Sciences, we have launched the Global Health Initiative (GHI) which brings together the cross disciplinary expertise of Dartmouth to confront some of these complex global health challenges and to strengthen our students’ capacities and spirits so that they might become “citizens among us”. 

Recognizing that global health affects national security, economic development, and social and political stability and that its challenges require input from, for example, health care professionals, biomedical scientists, ecologists, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, ethicists, etc., any approach to global health challenges should be based on broad cooperation from many academic disciplines.  Dartmouth College is well placed to launch such an initiative in keeping with our long-standing tradition of involvement in international affairs and international service; our academic and organizational strengths represented in the Arts and Sciences and our three professional schools; and our campus working environment of cooperation and cross-disciplinary engagement.

The GHI has, as one focus, raising awareness of global health issues and their consequences for global security and prosperity, and bringing together individuals and groups at Dartmouth involved in global health. The GHI also allows students to explore health-related topics in a broader arts and science context and introduces them to ways to participate in solving global health issues, even if one is not a doctor.

Another focus in the GHI is the classroom education of students, be they undergraduate, medical or graduate.  Such a curricular experience provide Dartmouth student with an interdisciplinary liberal education that would either pique their potential interest in a career in global health or prepare them to be knowledgeable and concerned citizens of this planet.