As noted earlier, the student-led Nurses for Global Health (NGH) has worked to bring global health issues to the attention of the student body and the faculty through frequent educational events and a large annual conference open to the entire University.
The focus of NGH has been to raise awareness
of global health issues and urge UMSON administrators
to turn awareness into practice through more
opportunities to work and study abroad, more global
health courses, and to have the issues of global health
threaded throughout their curriculum. Much of this
has been accomplished over the past six years, with
the Global Health Certificate Program — which was
envisioned and created in collaboration with the leadership
of NGH — being the most visible example.
The presence of both external and internal faculty
and student mobilization helped to place the development
of global health organizational capacity on our
school’s five year strategic plan in 2007. Part of this
strategic plan called for combining all international
activities of the school into one entity which became
the Office of Global Health (OGH) — formally opened
in 2009.