1. Why Do We Need Your Help?

We live in a globalised world where diseases know no borders. The globalisation of population mobility patterns is a key factor in the propagation of infectious diseases—a global health problem that affects us all. Cyclical outbreaks of viruses such as Ebola and Zika, plus the possible re-emergence of malaria in Europe, are the clearest proof of a real and present threat that directly affects our home communities. Moreover, human impacts on the environment—the driving force behind climate change—as well as urban design and the lifestyles of city dwellers (who currently account for over 55% of the world’s population) are having a negative impact on health in high-, low- and medium-income countries alike.

This new predicament obliges us to adopt a more global vision of health as a challenge transcending the local scale: global health is a problem that affects everyone, so we must all work together to solve it. This realization underpins the concept of planetary health—the notion that since the health of the human species is directly linked to the health of the planet, the preservation of the health of Earth’s natural systems is, therefore, a precondition for a healthy population. It has become increasingly clear that human health and planetary health are totally interdependent.

Fighting health problems at the global level is ultimately a way of combating the poverty and inequality that characterise the world’s most underdeveloped areas while also affecting developed areas, which continue to become more socially and economically polarised. It was against this backdrop that the United Nations approved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda in 2016. This agenda stresses the importance of ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all people at all ages (SDG 3), reducing inequality among countries (SDG 10), making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG 11), and taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts (SDG 13). The goals of ISGlobal are therefore fully aligned with the global development agenda.

At ISGlobal, we are dedicated to reducing the health differences that plague large swathes of the population all over the planet by tackling specific problems from a global perspective.

Our approach to health therefore involves epidemiological aspects (controlling infectious and transmissible diseases) as well as environmental aspects (all of the ways in which the actions of human beings affect our surroundings).

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