Our Story

In 2006, a group of Northwestern undergraduates were brought together by their common determination to answer one question: How can we, as students, engage in global health in a way that makes a lasting impact?

Frustrated by the short-term options offered to them—donating money to humanitarian organizations, participating in medical mission trips, studying abroad—they set out to design a new solution.

They committed to centering community leaders as the experts. Local leaders have the knowledge, relationships, and vision needed to create lasting change. However, neo-colonial global health structures often leave these community experts and their initiatives without necessary resources —funding, technology, research, global recognition—to effectively work towards health equity.

GlobeMed’s partnership model recognized that university students have access to the resources that have been inaccessible to grassroots organizations. Through long-term, one-to-one partnerships, students learned through hands-on experiences the leadership practices that community leaders identified as crucial for the global health equity movement. The partner organizations were able access resources they need to effect greater change in their communities.

In 2022, after more than 15 years of operations, the Board of Directors made the decision to close the organization at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year. The difficult decision was was prompted by the organization’s financial realities. Securing funding for long-term, systems change work has always been a challenge and GlobeMed was no exception.

However, GlobeMed was always much more than a nonprofit organization. It’s a network, a community, and a student movement for global health equity. With more than 6,000 alumni from nearly 70 universities, we are confident that our community has the passion and resilience to sustain the heart of this work: to learn and act together to advance global health equity. We’re extremely proud of the impact we’ve made during our 15 years of operation, and just as a pebble thrown into a pond causes far-reaching ripples and waves we can only imagine the ways that our work will continue to reverberate through the movement for global health equity.