Maverick Magazine Fall 2022: Teaching Global Health from a Global Citizen’s Perspective

As a child growing up in Sri Lanka, Mercy College Adjunct Instructor Shalini Eragoda, MSPH, perceived most of the people in her environment — her family, neighbors and school friends — as belonging to a world where all were treated the same. At the age of seven, when she and her family emigrated to Los Angeles, California, that perception changed. “Growing up in L.A. as a Sri Lankan immigrant, it was clear to me, even as a child, that not all people are afforded equal opportunity in the U.S.,” she said.

Although her parents both held jobs and believed in the importance of a good education for her and her brother, Eragoda said that she saw her parents struggling financially and trying to adapt. Throughout her childhood the family periodically visited Sri Lanka. “It opened my eyes to how privileged and lucky we were to be living in America,” she said.

For the past year, Eragoda has been teaching Global Health, a course at Mercy College that introduces students to public health fundamentals, including the socioeconomic, cultural and environmental determinants of health. “There’s an important difference between health equality and health justice,” she said. “As first articulated in 1946 by the World Health Organization, health care is a universal right, yet access to it is not universally available to every person. In this course, we discuss the systemic barriers which hinder disadvantaged populations from achieving equal access to care.” 

To read the full Maverick Magazine article, "Teaching Global Health from a Global Citizen’s Perspective," please click here. 

To read the full fall 2022 Maverick Magazine, please click here.