And currently, Henderson is designing a January-Term trip to Honduras, which he says will be an “educational experience” for interested students.

RISING POPULARITY

Henderson calls global health “sexy.” Han says it’s the “hot topic.” And both students point to globalization’s contribution to global health’s fad appeal.

Jeffrey B. Low ’11, who serves as president of Harvard Undergraduate Global Health Forum, attributes the popularity to global health’s interdisciplinary nature.

“There’s truly something for everyone,” he says. “You don’t have to be a doctor, you don’t have to have a Ph.D. to make a difference.”

But others say that structural changes in Harvard’s curricula are, in part, the cause behind students’ increased interest in Global Health.

Rebekah Getman, the program manager for the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, points to the launch of the General Education program as fostering an “uptick in student interest” in the field.

Gen Ed has given Harvard a “platform to address global health in a way we haven’t been able to before by encouraging more broad-based classes and innovative teaching techniques that allow a faculty member...to bring what she does over at the Harvard School of Public Health [for example] to the undergrads,” Getman says.

But according to David Cutler, a professor in applied economics noted for his work on the economics of health, the global health scene at Harvard was starkly different just a few years ago.

“There was almost nothing a student interested in global health could do in terms of studying it formally at Harvard,” Cutler says. “We had very few courses. There were faculty interested but they weren’t brought together in any serious way.”

Recently, the field has also enjoyed the support of University officials.

“[University President] Drew Faust’s two biggest priorities are global health, and energy and the environment,” Cutler says.

Cutler adds that this priority has been manifested in the growing number of global health-related courses taught by faculty ranging from Law School to Medical School professors.

But these courses are becoming more than just a mix of elective classes.  Next year, the secondary field in health policy—which was first approved in 2007—will become a joint public health and global health secondary, according to Deborah L. Whitney, the executive director of the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative in Health Policy.

THE FUTURE