Global Health

Stanford Health Policy researchers are exploring global policy, including:

• comparisons of different countries' health-care delivery and financing systems
• the diffusion of medical technologies worldwide
• global infectious diseases
• racial and ethnic disparities in health-care delivery and outcomes
• bioterrorism preparedness and response
• improving access to health care, particularly for disadvantaged populations in developing countries

Our international work is made possible through our collaboration with a network of international affiliates, who represent more than 20 countries and work in a variety of disciplines including medicine, economics, statistics, epidemiology, demography and psychology. This international work is part of a larger portfolio of research and training affiliated with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Stanford pediatrician Paul Wise, MD, MPH, is devoted to helping children whose health suffers from the indirect consequences of conflict. He has been visiting Guatemala each year for two decades to treat children and in 2007 established the Guatemala Rural Child Health and Nutrition Program. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the UN called on Wise to study health-care delivery on the front lines of Mosul, Iraq. His findings were grim. Wise and FSI colleague Michele Barry, MD, have worked together extensively researching the collision of civil war and the threat of global pandemics.

Eran Bendavid, MD, MS, an infectious disease physician and assistant professor of medicine, explores how decisions about foreign assistance for health are made, and how those decisions affect the health of those whom assistance aims to serve. His recent research projects include an impact evaluation of the U.S. assistance program for HIV in Africa; he worked with Stanford Health Policy colleague Grant Miller on a provocative study that showed that curbing U.S. aid to family planning clinics in the developing world actually promote abortion.

Miller, PhD, MPP, is focused on developing more effective health improvement strategies for developing countries by looking at the major causes of population health improvement around the world and over time.  Miller is on the steering committee of the King Center for Global Development, where he conducts retrospective observational studies that focus both on historical health improvement and the determinants of population health in developing countries today.

Joshua Salomon, PhD, focuses on measurements and valuation of health outcomes in the developing world, trends in major causes of global mortality and disease and the evaluation of health interventions and policies. Salomon, a professor of medicine, developed a new calculation to better measure progress toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals.