Global Health Minor

The Global Health minor offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the diverse field of global health for students across majors and academic interests. Explore how research, policy, technology, and social movements shape efforts to improve population health and advance health equity around the world. Examine past, current, and emerging global health trends while developing practical skills through experiential, practice-oriented, and problem-based learning. Throughout the minor, you’ll explore global health through the lenses of cultural humility, social justice, equity, and inclusion, while discovering the wide range of career opportunities in Global Health.

Add A Global Perspective to Your Major

  • Health Studies Major and Pre-clinical Health Careers: Add an international and global perspective to your health-focused studies.
  • Engineering Majors: Explore how tools and technologies can improve health.
  • Environmental Studies Majors: Examine connections between environmental and human health.
  • Biology Majors: Explore emerging and neglected diseases and how social conditions influence human biology.
  • Global Studies Major: Examine how social, economic, and political forces shape health around the world.

Highlights

  • Learn across disciplines and campuses: Take a transdisciplinary approach to global health and choose from electives across programs at UW Bothell and UW Seattle.
  • Connect local and global perspectives: Explore health across the local-to-global continuum, with opportunities to engage with health issues in local communities and international settings and learn from diverse global perspectives.
  • Put learning into practice: Build practical skills through community-engaged learning, case-based courses, application labs, advocacy, study abroad, and other real-world experiences. Relevant community-based learning and UW study abroad courses may count toward the minor.
  • Customize your skills: Use electives to develop skills aligned with your interests, including world language study and other skill-building courses.

Learning Goals

  • Enable students to critically analyze global trends and issues that impact health and wellbeing at local, regional, national, and transnational levels.
  • Increase students’ understanding of programs, policies, and social movements that aim to address and improve health.
  • Build a foundation for lifelong learning about cultural humility, social justice, equity, and inclusion by helping students develop cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills that help them to work and interact across social, economic, and cultural contexts.
  • Encourage students to apply knowledge to practice by building their understanding of work, advocacy, or study opportunities either in the field of global health, or in related disciplines and fields.

The Global Health Minor gave me practical skills and a strong foundation in global health that prepared me for study abroad in Togo, Peace Corps service, and graduate study in Global Health Policy. I’m now beginning my career with USAID in the Global Health Office of Health Systems Strengthening.

-Aimee Desrochers, UW Bothell Alum

Requirements and Course Offerings

  • Core courses, 15 credits
    • B HLTH 201: Introduction to Global Health (offered Autumn quarter only).
    • B HLTH 301: Global Health Practice- Systems, Places, and People (offered Winter quarter only).
    • B HLTH 423: Global Health- Critical Perspectives (offered Spring quarter only).
  • Approved Global Health Elective courses, 10 credits
    • Select 5 credits from 2 of the following three categories of approved electives: 1) Core topics in global health 2) Populations, regions, & issues 3) Skills & applications. The approved Global Health Electives organized by the three listed categories.

No more than 10 credits can overlap between this minor and the student’s chosen major. Students are eligible to use up to 5 credits of electives for language study or for BHLTH 400: Study Abroad: Health Studies. Credit for other study abroad programs must be petitioned.

Total Credits for Global Health Minor: 25 credits.

Declare This Minor

Petition a Requirement

  • Current UWB students, contact your academic advisor. Petitions are reviewed during the Autumn, Winter, and Spring quarters only. Petitions must be submitted by the 6th week of the quarter in order to be reviewed and processed prior to the end of the quarter.
  • Prospective students: If you believe you’ve taken an equivalent course and are not yet in the minor, meet with an admission counselor.