Since the end of the Second World War, the international community has tried to use different multilateral institutions to address the health challenges that affect populations across borders and that are determined by multifactorial reasons. The first and most prominent one of those institutions has been the World Health Organization (WHO), a body that has been subject to both high praise and harsh criticism. Other entities, mostly bilateral governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations have co-existed with WHO for decades. However, since the second half of the 1990's, new actors, both bilateral and multilateral, such as philanthrocapitalist foundations and public-private partnerships, started to play a key role in the Global Health field, strongly influencing its political priorities and financial flows. Today the Global Health arena is populated by a myriad of organizations both competing and collaborating amongst them.

This course will introduce students to the main Global Health challenges the world has been facing in the last decades; how the WHO has responded to those challenges, exposing its capacities and limitations; and the role that other actors are playing in shaping the Global health agenda.

General Competences

1. Develop critical and analytical capacities.
2. Analyse data related to global burden of disease.
3. Describe the governance model of multilateral organizations.
4. Critically appraise the role and agenda of global health actors

Specific Competences

1. Identify and use data sources.
2. Critically analyse available data.
3. Be able to use different indicators to analyse the burden of disease.
4. Describe the distribution of the global burden of disease.
5. Describe the most common health risks and determinants and link them to specific health conditions.
6. Analyse the Development Assistance for Health (DAH) financial flows.
7. Determine the coherence of the DAH priorities vis-à-vis the Global Burden of Disease.
8. Be able to identify the most relevant Global Health actors.
9. Analyse the decision-making structure of the World Health Organization.
10. Describe the funding sources of the World Health Organization