Fostering the next generation of global health ambassadors: Inside the first annual Northeastern University Global Health Initiative
What do you get when you combine serious worldwide topics like health care, climate change, access, and pandemic preparedness with enthusiastic students and a wide array of experts? The first annual Northeastern University Global Health Initiative Conference (NUGHI), a two-day event to get undergraduate students involved in global health.
“I’ve been passionate about global health and epidemiology since high school, but I’ve always found interacting with that field to be super foreign and hard to define for myself,” said fourth-year biochemistry major and NUGHI steering committee member Hugh Shirley. “We ended up deciding that the conference should focus on helping students understand global health and how they could get involved in the vast field.”
On Saturday, Oct. 20, I sat down in the auditorium of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex on campus, eagerly anticipating the introductory keynote address by Dr. James Cusack, a surgical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has travelled around the world to address healthcare disparities.
Focusing on his career and global experiences, Cusack discussed the urgent need to provide better healthcare access to underdeveloped countries, especially in sub-saharan Africa. In Uganda, there are 3.6 million people who have unmet surgical needs but less than 25 percent of the population even has access to a surgically capable facility.
So what can we do to make a difference for problems like these? Cusack closed his keynote by urging students to organize, advocate, coordinate, and most importantly persevere. “I look forward to your ideas as you bring them forth to this endeavor. It’s challenging and inspiring and you will cry and see some difficult things, but it is very rewarding,” he said.
Cusack closed his keynote by urging students to organize, advocate, coordinate, and most importantly persevere.
After leaving the keynote inspired to make an impact on global health, participants were able to choose to attend one of several workshops on topics ranging from HIV/AIDs advocacy to student leadership in global health and more.
I spent my morning in the workshop Planetary Health: For People and Planet, a dynamic workshop led by the Planetary Health Alliance (PHA), an interdisciplinary organization dedicated to advancing planetary health. This emerging field looks systematically at the human health impacts of our increasing environmental impacts across the globe.
With participants in the session broken up into three groups — infectious disease, food systems, and mental health — we each worked together to dive into a topic and brainstorm solutions from different perspectives like the government, a nonprofit, and a business.
Coming from several different majors, my group focused on food systems — discussing agricultural biodiversity, food availability in vulnerable populations, the effect of climate change on essential nutrients in our food and pollinators for crops, and more. After reading through several articles as a group, we took on the challenge to come up with a solution to some of these issues. Though quite difficult, it was interesting to see what people came up with and how each sector must work together in order for any idea to be successful.
“After a year and a half of preparation for this event, it’s especially inspiring to me to see students really engaging with the speakers,” Singh said.
“From anthropology, to political science and international affairs — there are so many different aspects of global issues we’re facing that we need to tackle in an interdisciplinary way,” said Zuzu Oomen-Lochtefeld, a third-year international affairs and anthropology major and part of the food systems group.
With more afternoon sessions to choose from and a networking reception over lunch, participants had the chance to explore many different areas of global health and meet other students making a difference in the field.
Dr. Michael Pollastri, Northeastern Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Chair and NUGHI faculty advisor, was impressed to see such passionate students from across the university, exemplifying just how wide the field of global health is. “For those of us faculty who began the global health initiative on campus, it’s amazing to see all this student enthusiasm for it. This group of students who had the idea for the conference and just ran with it created an unbelievable event,” said Pollastri.
The success of NUGHI was evident in every thoughtful discussion, curious question, and idea for the future. Third-year bioengineering major and NUGHI Director Kritika Singh was excited to hear such great conversation ignited by their many workshops. “After a year and a half of preparation for this event, it’s especially inspiring to me to see students really engaging with the speakers,” Singh said. “I’m so proud of Northeastern and the students here that everyone is excited to be a part of this really great, interactive exchange.”
