While completing a Masters of Public Health in the Department of Global Health, students have several ways to gain research and fieldwork experience around the world. Students have fellowship opportunities that allow for hands-on training in a multitude of countries, but the Peace Corps represents another way to apply classroom curriculum at UW to the real world. 

Climate change is already causing widespread harm to the health of all people living in the United States, with extreme heat making workers less productive and toxic air contributing to 64,000 deaths in a single year. In a new brief on climate change and health in the U.S. published Nov. 13, University of Washington and Harvard University researchers say it is still possible to prevent some health effects and mitigate others, and that aggressive action on climate is also action to protect health.

A core tenet of the Department of Global Health’s mission is understanding the causes of health inequities at multiple levels, including ways that health intersects with other pressing issues facing the global population. For David Frantz, a third-year undergraduate student in the University of Washington Global Health minor, that meant exploring ways that health can be weaved together with his other academic interests.

Jennifer Velloza spent a year crisscrossing the grass-covered plains and sloping hills of rural Swaziland, dividing her time among ten medical clinics in this small southern African country. Here, nearly one in four people have HIV — and that rate is even higher among women.

As a study manager for Doctors Without Borders, Velloza saw many pregnant and postpartum women struggle to get the HIV testing and treatment they needed, because they were also suffering from sexual trauma, depression or anxiety.