SPH Commencement '07: Garrett on Global Health

Global health is experiencing unprecedented advances and crippling challenges, says award-winning journalist Laurie Garrett. She delivered the 2007 School of Public Health commencement address to an audience at the University of Minnesota's historic Northrop Memorial Auditorium.

Garrett is the only writer to have been awarded all three of the Big "Ps" of journalism: the Peabody, Polk, and Pulitzer. She is the best-selling author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. And she is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Noting a profound sense of charity, $18 billion on the global health table, and plummeting rates of HIV/AIDS, Garrett spoke of the developed world's unprecedented "health generosity."

"But let's be clear, money alone solves nothing," she said. The world is also desperately short of health professionals, she said. As the wealthy world continues to age, the disparity of workers in developing and developed nations will only get worse.

She cited Ghana as an example. Right now, there are 2,500 doctors in Ghana—barely enough to serve the population. But New York City alone has 600 licensed Ghanaian doctors.

"Gaps like these will soon become catastrophic," she said.

"Welcome to the trenches," Garrett half joked to the 189 graduates. She then concluded with the following advice: "Fight well, show courage, learn politics, and become guiding lights of good governance."