Health is more than access to a good doctor or having an insurance plan. Health has physical, emotional, spiritual and social components — it is difficult to be healthy and remain healthy in unhealthy environments, or while being subjected to violent or exploitative relationships.

Could health be useful as a collective measure of the ability of societies to care for their populations?

Could the health of our cities, communities and families be intimately connected to the economy, politics and history?

What does it mean to consider health a right, not a state only maintained by those who can afford it?

These are some of the questions we’re grappling with as part of a collaboration with the Cornell University Global Health Program and Dr. Angel Pichardo Almonte in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, launched in 2014.

The Global Health Dominican Republic program was featured in Cornell Human Ecology Magazine, Fall 2015:
The DR is In, by Tim Shenk

The program has attracted press locally and in the DR.

Click on the image to read the text of the presentation. Photo: Ann Lei.

STUDENT REFLECTIONS

Read students’ writing on their life and work in Santo Domingo in 2014 and 2015 at globalhealthindr.wordpress.com.

Read a reflection by Vanessa Rivera ’14 on how the Global Health Program has prepared her for life after Cornell: “Global Health: Springboard to a career.”

Read thoughts by Dylan Van Duyne ’18 on his Dominican homestay experience:
“Becoming family in the Dominican Republic.”

Paige Wagar ’18 reflects on cultural expectations in “Nothing in DR begins on time!”

Julia Smith ’16 led Cornell students in inviting their Dominican counterparts to campus:
“Service-learning as relationship building.”