Structural competency and global health education

ABSTRACT

Structural competency is a new curricular framework for training health professionals to recognise and respond to disease and its unequal distribution as the outcome of social structures, such as economic and legal systems, healthcare and taxation policies, and international institutions. While extensive global health research has linked social structures to the disproportionate burden of disease in the Global South, formal attempts to incorporate the structural competency framework into US-based global health education have not been described in the literature. This paper fills this gap by articulating five sub-competencies for structurally competent global health instruction. Authors drew on their experiences developing global health and structural competency curricula—and consulted relevant structural competency, global health, social science, social theory, and social determinants of health literatures. The five sub-competencies include: (1) Describe the role of social structures in producing and maintaining health inequities globally, (2) Identify the ways that structural inequalities are naturalised within the field of global health, (3) Discuss the impact of structures on the practice of global health, (4) Recognise structural interventions for addressing global health inequities, and (5) Apply the concept of structural humility in the context of global health.

KEYWORDS:

• Social determinants of health
• structural competency
• global health
• education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Professor Alexander Kentikelenis of Bocconi University for his helpful comments related to the impacts of structural adjustment policies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.