Global Health in the Sparkman Center for Global Health directs its teaching, mentoring, and research toward understanding the root causes of health disparities and creating sustainable quality of life improvements that reach across political, social and geographic boundaries. An important part of the programs, and one that differentiates it from traditional public health, is the understanding that major health challenges stem from many factors well outside of biological disease- ecological, cultural, institutional, historical, evolutionary, social and technological. Any effective sustainable solutions to our most pressing global health challenges will need to take all of these factors into account, including the complex ways in which they relate to each other.

The B.S. in Public Health with a global health concentration is an interdisciplinary degree geared to provide a broad and flexible set of skills for understanding these contemporary health challenges and thinking about how they might best be solved. This concentration emphasizes the development of core skills in critical thinking and problem solving and the importance of direct experience (research, study abroad, service learning and advocacy). The GHS concentration requires students to successfully complete 21 hours of global health or development courses.

The Graduate Certificate in Global Health is a 15-hour certificate program offered to any UAB graduate student who wishes to gain knowledge and skills in the field of global health. Students may choose from several online or classroom-based courses to meet the requirements for this program. Upon successful completion of program requirements, students will receive a certificate of completion awarded by the University of Alabama at Birmingham.