Our Impact

summit.
“Our aim is to support those who most influence global health. ”

Global health inequity is one of the defining issues of the 21st century.

UB’s Community for Global Health Equity (CGHE) was established to address this grand challenge. We bring together faculty and students from the health sciences together with disciplines such as Architecture, Planning, Engineering, and other cross-synergizing disciplines (APEX) focused on the social, economic, political and environmental conditions that lead to inequities. 

We explore a range of issues, including:

  • Access to sanitation for women and girls
  • Exposure to air pollution among neonates
  • Securing essential medications for low-resource communities
  • High rates of non-communicable diseases due to complex sets of factors
  • Access to sufficient quantities of high-quality food

Our aim is to support those who most influence global health—leaders, organizations, and policy makers who can effect systemic and local change, as well as community members around the world who can inspire, promote and implement solutions in their respective locales.

Antimicrobial Resistance
8/31/20
With a projected 10 million deaths per year, antimicrobial resistant pathogens are predicted to be the leading cause of death worldwide by 2050. Pharmaceutical development cannot keep pace with the problem. To combat these threats before they reach cities, hospitals, and homes, we work with international partners such as the icddr,b seeking out and deterring resilient pathogens in the farms, aquacultures, wastewaters, and other ecologies from which they spread.
Early Life Exposome
8/25/20
The leading environmental health hazard is air pollution. While this and other toxins in food and the environment have proven especially threatening in the first 1,000 days of life, little is known about the cumulative, life-course effects on physical and mental health. To illuminate the “exposome” – the totality of cultural, nutritional, and environmental exposures – we investigate intersections between biomarkers and geo-markers, daily routines and family histories, prenatal care and life-long habits.
Food Equity
10/28/21
Despite producing 70% of the world’s food, small-scale farmers remain undernourished, as do their neighbors throughout the Global South. Improving food security cannot be done by increasing agricultural production alone; a systems approach is needed to advance access to nutritious, culturally meaningful food. To cultivate food equity, we work with both local stakeholders, such as farm operators, and international influencers, like the UNFAO, studying, developing, and implementing cross-sector policies-in-action.
Inclusive Environments
4/29/21
The 800 million people with disabilities living in low- and middle-income countries experience inequities in access to education, employment, and social services. While unjust policies and social stigmas impede progress, the lack of safe and accessible water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities is crippling. To empower girls, children with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations toward self-efficacy, we collaborate with global organizations like UNICEF, building socially inclusive policies, tools, and environments.
Refugee Health and Wellbeing
10/31/21
Though people have migrated for centuries, current local and global crises have triggered forced movement on a scale not witnessed since World War II (Lemke, 2017). The influx of refugees to host nations has generated nationalist supremacy discourses and polarized cultural debates that both “welcome” and “reject” newcomers, including within the United States. This demands that researchers and practitioners concerned with increasing equity for refugees and other displaced persons, to push disciplinary boundaries, as well as existent policy and practices in ways that responsibly challenge those conditions that permit forced movement to continue. To do so, the Refugee Health and Well-Being Big Ideas Team cultivates co-constructed research-policy-practice partnerships at local, national, and international levels with the aim of supporting and growing equitable resettlement processes for displaced children, adults, and families.
The Global Child
10/28/21
Approximately 17,000 children die worldwide every day, 44% of which occur in the first month of life, often from preventable causes. Meanwhile up to 1 billion children and youth aged 2–17 years experience physical, sexual, or emotional violence or neglect, which has ramifications for physical and mental health well into adulthood. Effective medical, behavioral, and social interventions exist, yet scalability – working across borders and sectors – remains a challenge. To nurture vulnerable children and adolescents into healthy adulthood, we join global initiatives, such as those led by USAID, helping to deliver effective practices and policies that improve child and adolescent health and wellbeing.
Bridging Projects
9/24/20
The Community for Global Health Equity also supports faculty whose work more broadly influence the policies, systems, and norms that reinforce inequities. Their work enhances the work of our Big Ideas teams and ensures we are thinking about and acting upon the true causes of health inequity.
Apply for Travel Funds
1/27/21
The Community for Global Health Equity (CGHE), supports faculty research that promotes the health and well-being of under-resourced populations by helping reduce the sources and effects of inequity. 
Request Graduate Assistant Support
11/11/21
The Community for Global Health Equity Graduate Assistants (GA) are available to support faculty research. This support is limited and dependent on our GA availability as well as match between faculty needs and our GA skills, duration and percent effort required, and potential for advancing collaborative scholarship by the faculty member.
Think Big: Apply for Seed Funding
7/22/19
The Community for Global Health Equity (CGHE) seeks to foster novel scholarship that harnesses the power of transdisciplinary collaboration to address the complex sets of barriers to achieving global health equity.
Identify External Funds
3/4/20
Our University scholars are advancing foundational science and developing innovative solutions to overcome socio-cultural barriers and achieve health equity. We regularly update a list of funding opportunities below for the benefit of our affiliated faculty and partners. Our Program Coordinator, Dr. Lisa Vahapoğlu, is poised to assist faculty with individual searches. Contact Dr. Vahapoğlu for more information.
Apply for Micro-grants
8/24/21
CGHE micro-grants are a mechanism for faculty to push their research to its next phase and should increase their capacity to submit competitive proposals. Projects must focus on health inequities within Global South communities. That is to say, occurring within low- and middle-income countries and/or among marginalized and minoritized populations within the United States.
Apply for Co-produced Research Awards
2/16/21
Co-produced research awards support the development and advancement of co-produced knowledge. By “co-produced,” we mean knowledge that is developed under the auspices of a cooperative, mutually-respectful relationship between people whose practice springs from academia and those whose expertise arises from lived-experience within a given community. CGHE will team projects proposed by faculty/student and community partners that result in a co-produced product (ex., report or publication) that adds value to existing global health equity work. For more information about what co-produced knowledge is, have a look at these videos. 
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