What is global health—and who gets to define it?

For decades, the field has claimed universality while being shaped largely by specific institutions, priorities, and assumptions. But what happens when we center the places where most global health “problems” are identified? What does it mean to tell someone living in a Dhaka slum to shelter in place during a pandemic?

In this episode, Salma is joined by Dr. Sabina Faiz Rashid, Professor and Mushtaque Chowdhury Chair in Health and Poverty at the BRAC James P. Grant School of Public Health in Bangladesh; Director of the Center of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights; and Honorary Professor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. As a medical anthropologist whose career has been rooted in the alleys, kitchens, and courtyards of Dhaka’s urban slums, Dr. Rashid has spent decades challenging how we think about health, poverty, gender—and whose knowledge counts.

Together, they examine what global health often misses: the over-reliance on disease-focused indicators, the tendency to blame individuals for choices that are shaped by circumstance, and the habit of designing interventions far from the communities they attempt to serve. Drawing on vivid examples from Dr. Rashid’s ethnographic work, they explore how a mother’s health depends not only on symptoms or clinical markers, but on whether water runs for 20 minutes today, whether her husband finds work, and whether she has more than one egg to feed her children.

The conversation moves from methodology to power. Salma and Sabina discuss why qualitative and quantitative approaches both matter—and why neither is meaningful without genuine community partnership. They also consider the limitations of current “decolonization” conversations, suggesting that simple binaries obscure the complex power dynamics that exist both between and within countries.

This episode is an invitation to rethink global health from the ground up—its assumptions, its methods, its politics, and its future. It’s a conversation for anyone who believes public health must reflect the lived realities of the people it aims to serve.

Useful resources:

- "Sabina F Rashid, PhD." BRAC University, www.bracu.ac.bd/about/people/sabina-f-rashid-phd. Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

- Rashid SF. Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows. Routledge; 2024.

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What do we mean when we say health is a human right? Dr. Benjamin Mason Meier is a Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill who has focused his research on the development, evolution, and application of human rights-based approaches to health.

In this episode, Dr. Meier joins Salma to explore the foundations of health as a human right—from its post-World War II origins to its development in international law. They discuss the obligations this framing creates for governments and international organizations, how rights must translate into tangible policies that improve health outcomes, and the tensions between advocacy and accountability. They also address the politics related to global health governance and human rights and consider what a human rights approach to health might look like in a future shaped by AI, climate change, and increased polarization.

Join this episode to learn about the difference between health as a human right as a slogan and health as a human right as a legal obligation—and why that distinction matters for global health's future.

Useful resources:

• Forman L, De Mesquita JB, Filho LB, Meier BM, Sirleaf M. How Did Human Rights Fare in Amendments to the International Health Regulations? J Law Med Ethics. 2024;52(4):907-921. doi:10.1017/jme.2024.172

• Gostin LO, Meier BM. Foundations of Global Health & Human Rights. Oxford University Press; 2020.

• Gostin LO, Meier BM, eds. Global Health Law and Policy: Ensuring Justice for a Healthier World. Oxford University Press; 2023.

• Robinson M. Human Rights in Global Health. Vol 1. (Mason Meier B, Gostin LO, eds.). Oxford University Press; 2018. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190672676.001.0001

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.

What can Reddit, Instagram, and other digital platforms tell us about population health? Dr. Yulin Hswen, associate professor at the University of California San Francisco and associate editor of JAMA and JAMA+ AI, is a computational epidemiologist using big data to understand population health in our increasingly digital world.

In this episode, Salma sits down with Dr. Hswen to explore what our digital environments can tell us about public health. From Reddit threads revealing untold health experiences to phone data mapping mobility patterns during disease outbreaks, Dr. Hswen challenges us to see social media platforms and online data not just as communication tools but as health environments that shape—and sometimes distort—population well-being.

Dr. Hswen shares how a personal healthcare experience first sparked her interest in digital data and reflects on what these traces can reveal about collective behavior, equity, and trust. The conversation dives into the ethics of digital and AI research—issues of privacy, representation, and accountability—and unpacks her proposal of “virtuosity” as the sixth V of big data. Dr. Hswen also discusses her work on ethical guidelines for AI using in public health and clinical medicine and how she approaches her editorial work at JAMA and JAMA+ AI and what excites her about the future of computational epidemiology and the use of AI in clinical and public health research.

Whether you're a researcher considering how to incorporate digital methods and AI into your work or simply curious about what your online activity reveals about population-level health patterns, this episode offers essential perspectives.

Useful resources:

• Hswen Y, Naslund JA, Hurley M, Ragon B, Handley MA, Fang F, et al. AI-Y: An AI Checklist for Population Ethics Across the Global Context. Curr Epidemiol Rep. 2025;12(1):13. doi:10.1007/s40471-025-00362-w

• Kosmyna N, Hauptmann E, Yuan YT, Situ J, Liao XH, Beresnitzky AV, et al. Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task. arXiv. Preprint posted online June 10, 2025. doi:https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872

• Roose K. Do Not Disturb: How I Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/business/cell-phone-addiction.html. February 23, 2019.

• Science & technology. Will AI make you stupid? The Economist. Published online July 16, 2025. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/07/16/will-ai-make-you-stupid

• Wesson P, Hswen Y, Valdes G, Stojanovski K, Handley MA. Risks and Opportunities to Ensure Equity in the Application of Big Data Research in Public Health. Annu Rev Public Health. 2022;43(1):59-78. doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-051920-110928

• JAMA+ AI Conversations. https://jamanetwork.com/channels/ai/pages/podcast

Host: Dr. Salma Abdalla Editors: Catalina Melendez Contreras and Zachary Linhares Marketing: Kinkini Bhaduri Music: Eden Avery / Melting Glass from Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/2fqOXWpHab/

The views and opinions expressed by the guest in this episode do not necessarily reflect those of their institution, the funders, or the podcast team.