Careers in Global Health
Global health encompasses many things. It’s local, national, international, and planetary. It’s interdisciplinary and involves the conditions that make good health possible, including social, economic, and environmental factors. It’s about improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide.
If you are thinking about a career in global health—or, more broadly, how you can incorporate global health into your professional pursuits—there are many opportunities to consider.
This webpage, created by Rutgers Global Health Institute, is designed to help you understand that the pathways to a global health career are diverse. You can incorporate global health in ways that are directly related to your academic program, and you can explore different ways of using your knowledge and skills to improve health locally and around the world. We hope that this collection of resources and inspiration will help you navigate your professional pursuits with a global health mindset.
Institute Resources
Career Stories
Job Boards
Other Resources
We also encourage you to discuss your professional ambitions with your academic advisor and take advantage of the university’s career-related services.
Institute Resources
Use our website as a career exploration tool. Check out the following sections to learn about global health practices from various perspectives.
When something resonates with you, take another step to find out about related career options. For example, talk to your teachers, advisors, mentors, internship or fieldwork supervisors, alumni, and peers about the field or industry and the job market.
Institute Membership Directory
Peruse the profiles of Rutgers Global Health Institute’s faculty, professional members, and staff. Their experiences involve a wide variety of global health practice areas.
Global Health Project Map
Rutgers faculty universitywide are engaged in global health. Get a sense of what’s happening locally and around the world, and get inspired.
Global Health Events at Rutgers
Events are great for learning and networking. Our online calendar features events relevant to global health from throughout the Rutgers community.
Global Health Seed Grants
Read about faculty projects in research as well as education, training, and capacity building. Their work, which addresses diverse global health problems, exemplifies areas of need and opportunity in the field.
Career Stories
Click the + after each headline to read about real people’s real experiences in global health. Along the way, ask yourself: does this interest me? Keep these areas in mind as you chart your own career path.
Experienced Alumni Discuss Careers Related to Global Health
Three Rutgers graduates who work in media, technology, and community engagement offer insight on professions that incorporate global health.
Topics include:
- barriers to health care access
- clinical research and development
- community outreach and engagement
- digital media
- health promotion
- hospital relations
- immigration
- journalism and publishing
- health care technologies
Botswana Cancer Initiative Leader Discusses Parallels with AIDS and Progress on Oncology Workforce Training
Refeletswe Lebelonyane is a physician, public health professional, and program manager for the Botswana-Rutgers Partnership for Health. In this Q&A, she discusses her work in cancer care and prevention efforts in Botswana and reflects on her past experiences confronting HIV/AIDS in the African country.
Topics include:
- cancer care and prevention in resource-limited settings
- epidemics
- infectious diseases
- noncommunicable diseases
- partnerships
- policy
- workforce education and training
Rutgers Helps Build Resilience in Communities Hard-Hit by COVID-19
Rutgers Global Health Institute’s Equitable Recovery program helps underserved communities in New Jersey offer residents accessible COVID-19 vaccination and testing.
Topics include:
- barriers to health care access
- community outreach and engagement
- low-income and minority communities
- pandemic
- partnerships
- program development
- small businesses
- social determinants of health
Faculty Member Receives NIH Grant to Implement a Mobile Messaging Intervention to Enhance Feeding Practices in Senegal
In Senegal, where malnutrition is the primary risk factor for morbidity and mortality, School of Public Health faculty member Shauna Downs is researching the impact of a mobile health messaging intervention on infant and young child feeding practices.
Topics include:
- food security
- health communication strategies
- nutrition
- technology
Global Health Experiences Influence New Grads’ Direction
Three Rutgers students talk about their experiences in food science, computational and integrative biology, and nursing, and how global health has played a role.
Topics include:
- barriers to health care access
- environmental determinants of health
- mathematical modeling to address health issues
- precision medicine
- social determinants of health
- urban food deserts
Family Literacy Program Helps Latino Children and Parents Get Ready for Kindergarten
Developed by an interdisciplinary team of professionals, the curriculum uses health and wellness themes to teach language and literacy acquisition skills to pre-kindergarteners in New Brunswick who are dual-language learners from low-income Latino backgrounds.
Topics include:
- community outreach and engagement
- early childhood development
- education
- environmental determinants of health
- literacy and language acquisition
- pediatric medicine
- program development
- social determinants of health
- virtual programming
Biomedical Solutions to Health Equity Problems
Topics include:
- biomedical engineering
- biosensor development
- commercialization
- electrical and computer engineering
- entrepreneurship
- machine learning
- point-of-care medical devices
Rutgers Inspires Establishment of New Jersey One Health Task Force
A physician and a vector biologist discuss the need for scientists to address how humans, animals, and the environment affect one another and to develop protocols to stop disease transmission from animals to humans.
Topics include:
- advocacy
- infectious diseases and surveillance
- state and government relations
- zoonotic and environmental public health threats
Veggie Rx Promotes Connections Between Food and Health
The collaboration serves New Brunswick’s poor and low-income residents by providing fresh produce from New Jersey’s farms and convenient access to health services.
Topics include:
- barriers to health care access
- community outreach and engagement
- environmental determinants of health
- food security
- medicine
- nutrition
- program development
- social determinants of health
Rutgers Doctor Selected for National Training Program to Promote Diversity in Clinical Trials
Reducing health disparities is an aim of efforts to increase the diversity of participants in clinical trials. “Many minority patients with cancer in the U.S. have limited opportunities for enrollment in clinical trials, which negatively affects the care they receive and the care of future patients in their communities,” says radiation oncologist Malcolm Mattes.
Topics include:
- clinical trials and research
- community outreach and engagement
- corporate and foundation relations
- diversity, equity, and inclusion
- oncology
Rutgers Leads Effort to Tackle Coastal Climate Crisis Through $20M National Science Foundation Grant
The project will bring together professionals from many disciplines, including sea level and climate scientists, civil engineers, urban planners, economists, emergency management specialists, environmental anthropologists, social scientists, humanists, and others. They will investigate the hazards the regions face, as well as the way people understand and respond to them. It will also investigate the behavior of the housing markets, mortgages, and insurance companies, and the effects on municipal budgets.
Topics include:
- climate change
- disasters
- economics
- environmental health
- planning and public policy
- social science
Local Internship Combines Social Work and Global Health
Both social work and global health “incorporate practices that emphasize equity and justice for all people” and “approach problem-solving by considering the multitude of factors that affect people’s lives,” says School of Social Work field education associate director Nancy Schley.
Topics include:
- barriers to health care access
- community outreach and engagement
- environmental determinants of health
- food security
- immigration
- program development
- social determinants of health
- social services
The World According to COVID-19
The global pandemic has affected every sector worldwide. Rutgers faculty discuss the health crisis in relation to their own areas of professional practice.
Topics include:
- academic medicine
- disaster response
- emergency medicine
- environmental determinants of health
- food security
- human behavior
- poverty
- public health emergency preparedness
- social determinants of health
- supply chains
Job Boards
Get more out of websites such as indeed.com and monster.com. In addition to searching for jobs you might apply to now, use them to read job descriptions and research organizations to get a better idea of what’s out there and what interests you (and what doesn’t). Here’s a tip: search for “health equity” to see what jobs incorporate this global health principle.
Global health job boards include:
Other Resources
Consortium of Universities for Global Health – Rutgers Global Health Institute sponsors the university’s institutional membership in this international organization.
LinkedIn – Connect with students and professionals who share your career interests, learn about organizations and companies that interest you, and join professional interest groups (examples include Global Public Health – Social Determinants of Health, ISPOR – Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, and Digital Health).
Professional associations – Find the websites for professional associations in fields and disciplines that interest you (for example, the National Association of Environmental Professionals, Association for Computing Machinery, or National Communication Association). Browse the job boards to get a sense of related career paths, and read about what the future holds in these professions.