ISGlobal and UB welcome new postgraduate students in Global Health for the 2025-2026 academic year

“We are very pleased to launch this academic year with such a diverse and energetic cohort. In a complex time for global health researchers and practitioners, it is even more necessary to encourage and support those students who seek to devote their careers to health equity across the world.”

Núria Casamitjana, Director of Education and Training at ISGlobal and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Barcelona (UB), welcomed the new students to the joint postgraduate programmes offered by UB and ISGlobal with these words. She addressed them in the Manuel Corachán room, which was filled with eager and enthusiastic new faces. These were the 42 students from 22 countries who enrolled for the 2025–26 academic year on the following programmes: the Master of Global Health; the tropEd Maste of Global Health; the Diploma of Global Health Fundamentals; and the newly launched Master of Applied Clinical Research: Global Health track (formerly the Master of Clinical Research: International Health track).

During the Welcome and Orientation Day, held on 10 September, students were introduced to the academic and practical aspects of the programmes and attended a seminar entitled “Positionality in a global health context of practice and research”, delivered by Rodney Reynolds, researcher and member of the Lambeth Health Research Collaboration (a partnership between local communities, government, and academia in the United Kingdom).

Inaugural Lecture: Rethinking childbirth care

Nine days later, the Aula Magna of UB’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences hosted the Inaugural Lecture of the new academic year: “Rewriting the Story of Childbirth: From Evidence to Transformation”, delivered by Professor Özge Tunçalp, Executive Director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp.

With an outstanding trajectory at the World Health Organization (WHO) and international recognition for her leadership in maternal health, Tunçalp emphasised the importance of combating mistreatment of women during childbirth and promoting respectful care, a challenge present in both low- and middle-income countries as well as high-income contexts. She shared results from studies in Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, and Myanmar, and stressed that “there will never be just one thing that solves complex issues, no magic bullets or one-size fits all”.

She also highlighted the need to adopt a multidisciplinary approach involving clinicians, social scientists, lawyers, and others; to care for carers —the various healthcare professionals—; and to promote country-level responses. As a roadmap, she outlined four core principles for advancing respectful care: achieving equity, being aspirational, focusing on person-centred care, and addressing complexity.

Diversity, collaboration, and the future

The incorporation of this new cohort reinforces the commitment of ISGlobal and UB to training professionals equipped to address the challenges of global health from a critical, interdisciplinary, and equity-driven perspective.