The Global Health Network joins the Department

The Global Health Network, an international programme that helps health workers and researchers around the world to lead their own research, has joined the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. 

Founded and led by Professor Trudie Lang, Professor of Global Health Research, the Global Health Network is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Research Information Sharing, E-learning, and Capacity Development. It connects a community of more than one million members – researchers, nurses, doctors, laboratory scientists and community health workers – through free training, practical research tools and knowledge hubs that share methods and evidence across diseases, disciplines and borders. Regional hubs in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean support research led by the people and institutions closest to the health challenges they study. 

Much of the world's burden of disease falls on communities where the evidence needed to guide care is thinnest. The Global Health Network works to close that gap by enabling high-quality studies in the places where data are lacking – so that research happens where it is needed, is led locally, and benefits the communities who take part. 

The team moves from the Nuffield Department of Medicine, where the programme was founded and has grown over more than a decade into one of the largest research capacity-building initiatives in global health. Its work is rooted in primary care and community settings, and the move supports one of the department's three strategic priorities for 2025–2030: advancing global primary health care. Professor Lang leads this priority for the department. 

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh, Head of Department, said: 'The Global Health Network (TGHN) has an outstanding track-record in enabling research, supporting peer-to-peer education and health advocacy across the world with a focus on low- and middle-income countries.  Their work is firmly rooted in primary care and community settings, and this move to our Department will support the team to further develop their impact in enabling evidence generation in diseases and communities where evidence is currently lacking. It is also an opportunity to strengthen our ties with global health groups across the University.' 

Professor Trudie Lang said: 'The most significant gains in tackling the major global health threats can be made at the community level of healthcare, and this is also where there is the greatest need for capacity strengthening alongside building locally leadership and agency, so primary care is a natural home for The Global Health Network in Oxford. Joining this department will widen the connections between this global community of researchers and health workers and world-leading expertise, strengthening and expanding opportunities for equitable partnerships and collaborations, and I'm very excited to see what we can do together.' 

Find out more about the Global Health Network at tghn.org.