TY - JOUR T1 - Global health beyond geographical boundaries: reflections from global health education JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002583 VL - 5 IS - 5 SP - e002583 AU - Sibylle Herzig van Wees AU - Hampus Holmer Y1 - 2020/05/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/5/e002583.abstract N2 - Summary boxOur experience suggests that global health is often taught as ‘public health somewhere else’.However, the experience and demands of global health students and pressing global health issues in all settings require a different approach.We, therefore, suggest that a more useful definition of global health is to move beyond the notion of geographical boundaries, with ‘global’ instead referring to a holistic, multidisciplinary perspective of health.We suggest that current global health educational practices include a broader disciplinary scope and focus on educational examples from throughout the world, including one’s own local context.As global health educators and researchers from Sweden, we read King and Koski’s1 argument that global health should be defined as ‘public health somewhere else’ with interest and recognition. Often, global health has been and still is being taught and practised precisely in this way, too often without critical reflection about expertise, accountability and inefficiency, as pointed out by the authors. From our experience of teaching global health, two themes both confirm and challenge the notion of global health as public health somewhere else: the experience and demands of global health students, and the existence of global health problems in our local setting. In this commentary, drawing on examples from global health education, we call for an urgent revision of current teaching practices. In order to do so, we propose a reframing of the global health definition with a move away from a focus on geographical boundaries and instead focus on the global scope of the discipline.Global health curricula often focus on health issues not only ‘somewhere else’, but specifically in low-income countries. In our global health teaching, we often encounter students from low-income countries who are disappointed to learn about their countries of origin—of which they may be the true experts. While originating from … ER -