The Blackwell Companion to Globalization

Chapter 27

Public Health in a Globalizing World: Challenges and Opportunities

FARNOOSH HASHEMIAN AND DEREK YACH

There is a rapidly growing body of literature on the topic of globalization and its implications for human health. The impetus of this chapter was to provide an overview on current debates in global health and to contribute to a fuller understanding of the challenges and opportunities of globalization on health. This chapter describes the important features of the globalization process that are linked to population health. The present framework is developed in the following steps: the concept of globalization and a conceptual model for globalization and population health; global economic and health inequities; the impact of globalization on human nutrition; changes in patterns of disease; human mobility and knowledge disparities; human security; and finally there is a discussion on global governance of health.

Globalization can be defined as an array of processes that are modifying the nature of humans’ interactions across spatial, temporal and cognitive boundaries (Lee 2002). According to McBride and Wiseman (2000) globalization ‘involves a range of contradictory and contested processes which provide new possibilities as well as threats to communities concerned with promoting relationships of diversity, solidarity and sustainability’.

Globalization has an impact on four key areas of public health: in reshaping the broad determinants of health, health status and outcomes, ...