Who Lives, Who Dies: Reimagining Global Health

A lab flask icon with the words "Science & Technology in Society" with green border.

Lindsey Zeve, Jason Silverstein, Salmaan Keshavjee and Luke Messac

Gen Ed 1093     |    Fall 2025     |    Course Listing   |    Canvas Site 

Tuesday & Thursday, 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM

How can health care systems be restructured to provide high quality care even to the poorest and most vulnerable people on our planet?

Health care is never just about medicine. It is about people. It is about those pushed to the margins, whose lives are ground down by poverty, trapped by unjust systems, and devalued by forces that declare some lives worth less than others. This course challenges students to reimagine disease, illness, and injury as biosocial phenomena—shaped as much by poverty, racism, and political violence as by pathogens. From rural Malawi to American prisons, from tuberculosis programs to the overdose crisis, we will trace the roots of global health inequities and examine the ideologies that sustain them. But this course is not only about identifying failures. It is about how we stand alongside the sick and destitute to fight for a future where health is a human right.