TY - JOUR T1 - Is it about the ‘where’ or the ‘how’? Comment on <em>Defining global health as public health somewhere else</em> JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002567 VL - 5 IS - 5 SP - e002567 AU - Sara Elisa Fischer AU - Poorvaprabha Patil AU - Chris Zielinski AU - Lori Baxter AU - Francisco Javier Bonilla-Escobar AU - Shabina Hussain AU - Claudia Lai AU - Sarah Catherine Walpole AU - Francis Ohanyido AU - David Flood AU - Ambrish Singh AU - Najeeb Al-Shorbaji Y1 - 2020/05/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/5/e002567.abstract N2 - Summary boxThe original commentary by King and Koski makes many important points, but we feel that the definition they provide, suggesting that the field is distinguished by the geographical relationship between practitioners and recipients, is too limiting.We propose an alternative definition of global health as public health everywhere, which takes into account the ‘how’ as well as the ‘where’, and we urge readers to emphasise equity in addition to geography.In our global health ecosystem, health problems, and the people who experience, prevent, solve and study them, are interconnected and cross national boundaries.Good governance, increasing use of local expertise, locally appropriate sustainable technologies and knowledge exchange programmes across countries and communities can all play an important role in delivering public health everywhere.A recent commentary by King and Koski1 proffers a parsimonious definition of global health: as ‘public health somewhere else’ (emphasis in original). The authors describe how this definition highlights the underlying assumptions and normative issues that emerge when considering the practice of public health outside one’s home community. While we agree with many of the points made by the authors, we feel as though this was a missed opportunity to push the definition of global health forward applying systems thinking. This commentary first addresses the points of convergence and divergence with the original article’s main arguments. We then suggest why the definition presented does not do justice to the dynamism of global health. Finally, we conclude with a revised definition and discussion on what such a definition should encompass.The authors raise relevant and justifiable concerns regarding some common assumptions among global health practitioners. First, we agree that the oft-assumed ‘expertise gradient’ is problematic and maintains an ill-conceived notion of the foreign expert. This presumes that global health is practised by foreign experts in distant … ER -