212358 Critical perspectives on teaching international health: The new edition of Oxford university press's textbook of nternational health: Global health in a dynamic world

Tuesday, November 10, 2009: 9:30 AM

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, MA, ScD , Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Faculty of Medicine, Toronto, ON, Canada
Timothy H. Holtz, MD, MPH , Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA
Yogan Pillay, PhD , Strategic Health Programmes, Department of Health, Willows, Pretoria, South Africa
This session discusses the challenges of writing an international health textbook that is useful for audiences in both “the South” and “the North,” and among practitioners, researchers, advocates, academics, professionals, students, and activists. We will describe the writing and analysis choices made in both explaining the basic principles, players, problems, and policies of international health (including the contest between international and global health) and in providing a critical perspective on the very same issues through the political economy of health framework used in the textbook. We will illustrate the talk with a range of examples from chapters on International Health Agencies, Activities, and Other Actors; Epidemiologic Profiles of Global Health and Disease; Societal Determinants of Health and Social Inequalities in Health; Health under Crisis; Globalization, Trade, Work and Health; Environment and Health; Toward Healthy Societies: From Ideas to Action; and Doing International Health. We will pay particular attention to how the book covers access to water as an international health issue.

Learning Objectives:
1. To explain the challenges of teaching the basic building blocks of international health from a political economy of health perspective. 2. To discuss how to make a single international health textbook useful and relevant to diverse audiences. 3. To differentiate a critical political economy analysis of international health from other contemporary analytic frameworks.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am co-author of a text on International health, and subject matter expert on disease control.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Public Health and Social Justice
See more of: Socialist Caucus