Global and Community Health at UC Santa Cruz aims at improving health and reducing health inequalities both locally and globally. We are an interdisciplinary program that bridges the sciences, social sciences, engineering, humanities, and arts with shared commitments to health justice and the development of community partnerships.
a collaborative, interdisciplinary program
Discover health justice through our degree offerings.
Academics
B.A. program
This degree is appropriate for students interested in careers ranging from medicine, nursing, dentistry, and pharmacy to public health and environmental health work in governmental agencies, to global health and community health work with non-governmental organizations, law firms, and universities.
B.S. program
This degree is appropriate for students who aspire to a wide range of careers in direct patient care or the science of medicine. Students choose between two concentrations—the biomedical concentration and the public and community health concentration.
In both degree programs, B.A. and B.S., students are required to complete a capstone course entitled ‘Global and Community Health Task Force’ (GCH 190) in which they work in interdisciplinary teams to research a real-world health challenge and collaborate in writing a report that recommends responses.
Research
Bringing our faculty and students together across all five academic divisions, research in the Global and Community Health program is centered on a shared commitment to social justice and health.
We connect global health lessons with local needs right here in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties.
Faculty
Our faculty are committed to the value of interdisciplinary learning, as well as to the possibilities of connecting teaching and research with public health concerns beyond the university.
We benefit from a truly collaborative interdisciplinary program, where we all collaborate and learn alongside students and faculty from multiple departments.
Global and community health campus news
Computer Science & Engineering, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, Education
Celebrating the Class of 2025: Innovators, advocates, and future leaders
Highlighting a handful of graduates who are ready to make a difference
Global & Community Health, Latin American & Latino Studies, Social Sciences
New book explains the public health costs of prisons and policing
Assistant Professor Carlos Martinez’s latest co-edited book explores the public health impacts of punitive policing, incarceration, and deportation policies and describes how the abolitionist health justice movement is working toward a new, more just vision of “safety” that protects, rather than harms, the health and wellbeing of our society’s most vulnerable people.
Global & Community Health, Politics, Science
Tools and training combat health impacts on farmworkers that are worsened by climate change
A UC Santa Cruz-led project has launched a new bilingual app allowing the public to assess and anonymously report climate-related health risks in agricultural communities statewide. Over 50 newly trained community health advisers will use the app and other tools to teach farmworkers about health risks worsened by climate change and the remedies available through state-mandated health protections.
