Select Programs

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) is committed to developing and implementing new approaches to critical global health challenges. To fulfill this mission, GHI seeks to effectively mobilize the capacities of the Mailman School, as well as those of the wider Columbia University community and our partners in New York City, throughout the country, and overseas.  GHI’s vision is to ignite the synergies established through these collaborations to fundamentally reshape thought and practice in the field of global health.

To this end, the work of GHI is framed around the following four distinct but complementary strategic objectives:

• Enable leadership to shape the agenda, knowledge-base, and practice of the field of global health
• Foster new interdisciplinary science that brings focus, insight, and innovation to key global health challenges
• Strengthen global partnerships that provide the basis for work of sustained impact and influence
• Develop innovative educational programs that embody our commitment to influence, science, and partnership

GHI Principles

Our work is guided by principles that reflect our history and commitment to provide effective leadership and judgment. In order to meet these goals, the GHI will:

• Work by means of principled partnership, which involves investment in enduring relationships, founded upon mutual respect and equitable benefit;
• Uphold a commitment to the role of evidence in addressing crucial, and at times controversial, questions;
• Signal an appreciation of the multi-level and systemic nature of global health challenges (and thus solutions);
• Acknowledge, and seek to build upon, the inextricable linkages between research, education, and translation to policy and practice; and
• Recognize the moral compass of human rights and social justice as determining our foci and methods.