PROGRAM ON GLOBAL HEALTH AND TECHNOLOGY ACCESS

Director, Anthony So, MD, MPA

The Program on Global Health and Technology Access at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy supports research, policy convenings and teaching on issues of globalization and health.

Globalization describes how goods, services, culture and ideas cross borders, and more specifically in the context of health, how disease-causing pathogens, the knowledge to care and cure these maladies, and the products to treat them do or do not cross these borders. Health inequities may result when there are asymmetries in what becomes globalized. In some cases, the product readily crosses borders, but consumer protections lag behind (e.g., tobacco). In other cases, the expectations of life-saving treatment readily cross borders, but access to the essential drugs lag behind. The Program on Global Health and Technology Access is particularly interested in the ownership and control of knowledge and how it is harnessed to improve the health of the poor.

The program conducts research and hosts meetings on improving pharmaceutical innovation and access to address these health disparities, works as the Strategic Policy Unit of the ReAct coalition combating antibiotic resistance, and has launched an NIH research and capacity-building program on “The Political Economy of Tobacco Control in Southeast Asia.”

The program also supports various educational initiatives, from the highly competitive Global Health Fellows Program that places graduate students in summer policy internships in Geneva (part of the Sanford School of Public Policy’s Program on Global Policy and Governance) to the Pharmaceutical Policy Leaders in Medicine Institute co-organized with the American Medical Student Association Foundation.