BMJ Global Health: ‘Global health’: meaning what?
Sebastian Taylor, head of global operations at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), examines the meaning of the term “global health,” writing, “[Global health] is described as a metaphor, a conceptual framing, a set of legal norms, and as a distinct field of practice; as an emerging science, an area of policy and research, and as a formative disciplinary field of study. But the precise dimensions of the idea remain unclear. … In the absence of a single global actor authorized to mediate global health, ‘global health’ may be shaped to whatever the most powerful global actors determine it to be” (4/29).