Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Pennsylvania/Medical missionaries to Community Partners (Fall 2023)

Global health is an often repeated goal for modern leaders of countries, non-governmental organizations, and social justice advocates. Despite its modernity, this goal has been elusive for more than 100 years and despite the advancement of science. As we have experienced, in epidemics and pandemics, global health becomes a greater focus as data, science, and expertise tell us socially and politically how to make other populations healthier. Critics highlight language of a new imperialism through aid programs, exoticization through medical tourism, and reification of traditional social hierarchies of injustice and inequity through benevolence. We will examine the evolution over time and place of people and programs to improve health of “underserved” populations. Traditionally categorized as public health and efforts to achieve a just society, we will develop an assessment method for programs and conceptualize future partnerships on both a local and international stage. Students should expect to question broadly held beliefs about perceived good and service. Students will explore these issues as they research an individual, organization, or topic in global health and publish a new wikipedia article on it.