Global & Community Health

Global and Community Health aims at improving health and reducing health inequalities both locally and globally. It’s an interdisciplinary program that bridges the sciences, social sciences, engineering, humanities and arts with shared commitments to health justice and the development of community partnerships.

$2M


award for farmworker community health

24


research areas

81


affiliated faculty

  • Matt Sparke

    Lessons from COVID reveal how monopoly power in the biopharmaceutical industry is evolving

    Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, Politics Professor Matt Sparke, co-director of UC Santa Cruz’s Global and Community Health Program, kept a close watch on the global biopharmaceutical industry. Like many others around the world, he was deeply concerned by huge global inequalities in access to testing tools, vaccines, and other biomedical counter-measures. As a scholar of…

  • UCSC iGEM team

    UCSC iGEM 2023 addressing harmful algal blooms through synthetic biology

    This year’s team of student innovators, members of the UCSC International Genetically Engineering Machine (iGEM) program, is addressing a local yet widespread environmental issue: harmful algal blooms in Watsonville’s Pinto Lake. The team’s bioengineering approach targets the toxic genes of the specific bacteria responsible for the algal blooms, creating a non-invasive, long-term solution to preserve…

  • Woman putting a COVID vaccine into a syringe.

    Equity gaps in COVID-19 deaths closed for some racial and ethnic groups, widened for others during vaccine rollout in California

    A team of public health researchers from UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, and UC San Francisco published new research showing how racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 deaths across California changed as the rollout process for vaccines began.  During the early phases of the pandemic in 2020, Latino people across California were dying of COVID-19 at a…

Professor Valerie Cortez

Representation in UC Global Health Institute

Many researchers in Global and Community Health at UC Santa Cruz are also involved in the systemwide UC Global Health Institute (UCGHI). Valerie Cortez, global and community health core faculty member and assistant professor of molecular, cell, and developmental biology, serves on the institute’s advisory council. Each year, UC Santa Cruz students are appointed to the UCGHI Student Ambassador Program, where they develop their leadership skills. 

Introducing: Global and Community Health

Global and Community Health research operates across a wide range of scales, from the molecular and individual to the local community and on up to the nation and the planet. Across these scales, and through our cross-disciplinary communications, we aim to identify new, impactful research opportunities.

Last modified: Apr 16, 2024