NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, January 5, 2015

As a school that has already captivated a large number of students craving medicinal sciences as an undergraduate study of choice, UCSD has added another option to its portfolio of “pre-med” majors with its newly established global health Bachelor of Arts program.

Originally offered only as a minor, students now have the opportunity to embark on a unique major curriculum that combines courses from multiple departments to present a complete understanding of the theory necessary to tackle today’s complex global health issues.

The global health minor first made it onto the UCSD catalog four years ago with its eventual evolution into a fully developed major program in mind. As Global Health Student Advisory Committee representative Jarrod Ekengren explained, the motivation for the program’s inception was to provide a hands-on curriculum that would teach both biological sciences as well as social studies to meet the needs of an increasingly interconnected society.

“It becomes important to look at health on a global scale,” Ekengren told the Guardian. “Not just [that] but looking beyond biological medicine and looking at what are the social conditions that give rise to disease and illness and what can we do to bring all of these disciplines together — anthropology, sociology, biology, epidemiology … even economics — and solve the problems of society.”