Santa Clara University

Facilitator: Craig Stephens, Biology; Director of Combined Sciences

This Pathway will explore human health and the biological, environmental, psychological, and social factors that impact it, with particular attention to global issues, such as infectious disease, chronic disease, healthcare, mental health, pollution and environmental degradation, agriculture and nutrition, and poverty and social inequalities that affect human well-being. All courses included in this Pathway will include discussion of the social context of health issues, and issues germane to resource-poor regions of the world.

Why have we chosen this focus? Because good health is fundamental to human well-being, a basic understanding of the human body and what we can do to maintain its proper functioning is a perfectly reasonable part of a holistic liberal education. But in the complex world we live in, the study of human health encompasses far more than simply the normal functioning of our bodies. Indeed, most of humanity enjoys nothing like the excellent health that citizens of wealthy nations often take for granted.

Courses addressing the broad topic of global health necessarily include issues of social justice. Many global public health problems are inextricably linked to poverty and marginalization, which aren’t unique to the developing world. Indeed, people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in the U.S. have the highest rates of AIDS and tuberculosis, cancer, obesity, asthma, and psychological stress, and the least access to quality medical care. How a wealthy country like the U.S. deals with such gross inequality raises fundamental questions of fairness and justice. These are issues Santa Clara students should be grappling with during the course of their education!