Good Health and Wellbeing

About the Goal

3. Good Health The United Nations aims to ensure the health and well-being of individuals at all ages by 2030.

Northwestern is engaged in a broad range of research projects and other initiatives aimed at realizing this goal, including interdisciplinary research and partnerships focused on expanding knowledge, capacity and equity in global health. Other initiatives include research examining the regulatory, cultural and moral dimensions of healthcare; and strategies to advance policies that expand health security and public health science globally.

Northwestern Experts and Initiatives

Feinberg Institute for Global Health

Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Institute for Global Health is committed to promoting health equity issues through translational research and interdisciplinary training programs in both the U.S. and globally to strengthen the knowledge base for our trainees and to provide Feinberg School of Medicine students, residents and fellows access to valuable training experiences through our network of global partnerships. The institute’s research portfolio focuses on grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health as well as government contracts and foundation activities to conduct important research and training programs in low-income settings around the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. The institute’s leadership includes Robert Murphy, Executive Director, Institute for Global Health, John Philip Phair Professor of Infectious Diseases, and Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering; Robert Havey, Deputy Director, Institute for Global Health, Founder of the Global Health Initiative, and Clinical Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics); Kate Klein, Administrative Director, Institute for Global Health; and Chad Achenbach, Associate Director, Institute for Global Health and Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Preventative Medicine.

Antibiotic Resistance Global Working Group

Antibiotic Resistance Global Working Group is a collaboration between researchers at Northwestern University and Aga Khan University in Pakistan dedicated to better understanding the rapid spread of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across the world and ultimately to stave off the high mortality associated with infections from resistant bacteria. The project aims to develop infrastructure to evaluate AMR across two disparate healthcare systems and to better understand of how health-care providers make decisions around antibiotic prescribing. This includes the development of best practices for collecting standardized patient-level, microbiologic and bacterial genomic data in order to identify, investigate and prevent the spread of antimicrobial resistance globally, as well as the design and implementation of behavioral interventions to help providers adapt in meaningful and productive ways across different clinical settings.

Featured Course

Biomedicine and World History (379-0-20)

This lecture course uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a point of departure to study the history of global health and biomedicine in comparative terms. We will break up the quarter into four segments during which we will consider: 1) how and why infectious diseases "unified" the globe and with what effects; 2) the role of empires, industries, war, and revolutions in spreading biomedical ideas, experts, and tools around the world; 3) the functions played by transnational and global health institutions in setting medical priorities and sustaining health norms across continents; and 4) the growth of clinical trials, the pharmaceutical industry, and narcotics trade.

Explore the course