The Rise of Global Health

Download or read book The Rise of Global Health written by Joshua K. Leon and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the year 2000, unprecedented resources have been committed to the complex challenge of developing global public health solutions by national governments, multilateral organizations, and civil society groups. This vast global movement is one of the most remarkable political phenomena of twenty-first-century international relations—but is it working? In The Rise of Global Health, Joshua K. Leon argues against the conventional wisdom, which argues that collective action on development issues—including controversial increases in foreign aid—is too inherently inefficient to succeed. Leon shows that public action on a global level can successfully pursue health equality. Often at the behest of grassroots activists, these disparate groups of actors are cooperating more than ever with the aim of improving our human potential through better health. Though operating at cross purposes with unequal trade agreements and other factors within the global economy harming the Global South, we learn something surprising about global health governance—it is evolving in ways more efficient than we think.