“GlobeMed or Go Home”
Alumni credit GlobeMed experience as one of their foundations in activism, forming Right to Health (R2H) Action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Graduations make every “last” a reason to celebrate: last 20-page paper, last presentation, last final exam. Goodbye to the 24-hour library that breeds its own flu variants. Goodbye to the professor whose exams averaged 40 percent. Goodbye to the GlobeMed babies you raised, now carrying on the torch.
For graduating GlobeMedders, the existential question hits: “How do I continue to advocate for health equity and social justice?” For many, GlobeMed was the eye-opening introduction to global health and sustainable change. Chapter meetings provided the space to learn, discuss, and organize with other students, fostering an empowering camaraderie. At the University of Southern California (USC), chapter meetings also became weekly Trader Joe’s potlucks with the occasional brunch bonding events. “GlobeMed or Go Home” was the unofficial catchphrase, eventually immortalized on chapter merchandise.
My senior year, I led GlobeMed at USC’s HillTop Team: Tara Saha, Megan Smith and Harsimar Kang. Just as GlobeMed had done for us, we wanted to create an educational and stimulating environment for budding activists. At such a socially and politically divided time worsened by misinformation, providing the network and resources to deepen others’ understanding of social inequities was dire.
The interdisciplinary collaboration was both awe-inspiring and indescribable. Sasha Fisher, Co-Founder and Executive Director of our partner organization, Spark Microgrants, delivered a stirring keynote speech. Breakout ghU sessions hosted other Southern California universities, local nonprofits, and different schools within USC. The extended GlobeMed family assembled in support, with GlobeMed Headquarters (HQ), GlobeMed at USC alumni, and the GlobeMed at UCLA chapter in attendance.
Though immensely proud of the HillTop team’s work and my parting GlobeMed at USC legacy, the same senior year question haunted me. How do we continue our health equity and social justice advocacy (especially crucial in 2018 when so many rights were under attack) without the structure of school? Or sadly, will our passion and momentum fade as the realities of adulthood burn us out?
Two years later, the COVID-19 pandemic forced society to be predominantly upheld by healthcare. Activists, such as many GlobeMed alumni, have long flagged the glaring inequities and flaws of the healthcare system now responsible for an entire nation’s well-being. Old GlobeMed group chats resurrected, everyone eager to check up on friends, now working in all levels of medicine or public health throughout the world. Most unifying of all was the collective fury knowing the current infrastructure will falter, devastating the marginalized and most vulnerable. As if all simultaneously defibrillated, our drive and tenacity to mobilize was reignited. And the foundation in health activism that GlobeMed instilled was the epinephrine we needed.
On March 19th, 2020, Right to Health (R2H) Web-In was formed, with several GlobeMed alumni as founding members. By hosting webinars featuring esteemed leaders from different fields, the initial goal was to disseminate accurate, fact-checked information and facilitate conversation with participants to come to a deeper understanding of the political circumstances that enable a virus like COVID-19 to grow into a devastating global pandemic. Overwhelmed by the amount of support and volunteers, R2H expanded into the larger, nationwide grassroots movement now known as Right to Health (R2H) Action.
“GlobeMed was built around a couple key questions: what was our responsibility as university students to engage seriously in the work of global health equity, and how could we go about building solidarity-based bonds with people pragmatically working to deliver care around the world? Slowly working to build an organization that could link university-based chapters with health equity delivery organizations around the world opened our eyes as to what a broad solidarity-based movement organization could be.
As it became increasingly clear in the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic that this disease was going to spread rapidly, and would have the worst effects for those immiserated by the overlapping violence of capitalist exploitation, structural racism, sexism, and legacies of colonial rule, we knew that an organization had to be built to stand in solidarity and fight for just policies in this moment. That was the initial spark of the idea and intention behind R2H Action, and we’re still pushing with all our might more than two years into this latest terrible pandemic. GlobeMed and R2H Action are two portions of one thread that is weaving together a never-ending movement for health and human rights alongside countless others.”
Jon Shaffer, R2H Action Co-Founder, former GlobeMed Executive Director
“GlobeMed showed me how to stand up to the unfairness I was feeling and seeing in the world. In college for the first time, I felt that I was not just subjected to and witnessing social injustices, but now finally a part of the solution to a global crisis. I felt awakened and empowered. Indeed a small group of determined people can make a difference in the world. I fell in love with our model for partnership. As we practiced, we also educated ourselves… feeding our mind, soul, and heart for this lifelong commitment. The friends I’ve made at GlobeMed are fighting beside me in this pandemic that has forever changed our lives.
Disease knocked on my family’s doorstep and unfairly took the life of my beloved grandmother, who did not deserve to die alone in a hospital after raising a big family. When this happened, I knew there was something I could do about this just as I had done before with GlobeMed. Even though the rest of my family members are not activists, thanks to my upbringing as a global health advocate at GlobeMed I decided that our family’s loss does not have to end as a personal tragedy. In fact I can do something to change the world in honor of my grandmother. The fight remains long and hard, but with my GlobeMed community of friends with shared values I can have the courage and strength to press forward in a personally difficult time. That is what brought me to step up for policy change with Right to Health Action, where we are now pushing for a safer, healthier, and more just world. Our goals go hand-in-hand with the lessons I first learned with GlobeMed, in that systemic injustices take the lives of those who are in poverty. I am speaking up and organizing communities to win equitable global vaccination and a pandemic prevention fund.”
Tulika Singh, PhD, MPH; R2H Action Board Member, Fundraising Team Lead, and Co-Organizer; GlobeMed at UW-Madison ‘13
GlobeMed not only inspired so many R2H activists, but also continues to be a close organizational partner. Our second webinar, Racial Capitalism and the COVID-19 Catastrophe, was moderated by GlobeMed Executive Director Priya Fremerman. She led the discussion to unpack the appalling inequalities in COVID-19 outcomes across many social fault lines, most glaringly along the lines of race in America. GlobeMed Founding Member Victor Roy, MD, PhD moderated the third webinar, Medicine for the People, to discuss drug pricing, research and development, and the important role of advocacy to promote equitable access to medicines.
“Right to Health Action is exactly what I hoped we would come together and achieve as a GlobeMed alumni network. It’s the next interaction of our movement as young health activists, and we are stronger because of the foundational values and global health knowledge we all received as students in GlobeMed.”
Alicia Stromberg, R2H Action Communications Strategist, GlobeMed at UW-Madison ‘14
“GlobeMed has given me the foundation to understand what sustainable partnership means, inspired me to challenge the patriarchal aid systems that still persist today during a global pandemic and to advocate fiercely for building resilient healthcare systems. This pandemic isn’t over anywhere until it is over everywhere.”
Giovanna Braganza, MPH; R2H Action New York State Captain; GlobeMed at the University of Rochester ‘17
On March 19th, 2022, Right to Health (R2H) Action celebrates its two-year anniversary. Since its inception, R2H has received 450+ organizational endorsements for their policy platform, the “People’s Pandemic Prevention Plan,” along with 141 congressional cosponsors. The organization’s second congressional sign-on letter received bipartisan support from 120 Members of Congress calling for $2 billion in seed funding for a global pandemic prevention fund. Their network of state-level organizers have led 1000+ meetings with Members of Congress, working to turn each one of those congressional endorsements into votes in support of the 12 bills that the organization has helped to write, edit, and shepherd through Congress in the last year. R2H has also held 20+ public events and trainings, featuring esteemed speakers like the late Dr. Paul Farmer, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and Dr. Tom Frieden. Collective actions have also been covered by the New York Times and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Right to Health Action is entering year three as a grassroots movement for health equity and we will continue to fight for stronger public health policies that will end COVID-19, mobilize vaccines around the world, enact resilient health systems, and prevent future pandemics. We will be birddogging candidates on the campaign trail this year in the midterm elections and maintaining our powerful lobbying efforts. If you’d like to get involved, learn more at www.r2haction.org/join-us.
So dear fellow alums,
Dig up your old chapter t-shirt, no matter how worn out it may be. Hunt down that quarter-zip you wore every week. Think back to the first ghU that fired you up. Flip through old Facebook photos if you need to. You may not be an active member of GlobeMed, but remember the foundation it laid. Fan the reignited flames, and let it sink in that many deaths could have been prevented if society hadn’t dismissed our activism so nonchalantly. Regardless of which organization or movement you decide to join, use everything you learned in the past with the resources you’ve built since then. Go big GlobeMedder, because with the state the world is in, we cannot afford to go home.
All the GlobeMed love,
Victoria Sevilla, Right to Health (R2H) Action — Communications Team, GlobeMed at the University of Southern California (2015–2018)
Right to Health Action is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, mobilizing to stop COVID-19, build back better, and prevent pandemics of the future.
With a scalable grassroots platform and a 40-person steering committee, we educate policymakers and mobilize the public through regular high-profile online teach-ins and town halls, real-world protests, digital ‘birddog’ events, and, as a signature, 100+ real constituent meetings with policymakers that we organize every single month.
To connect with Right to Health Action:
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