Global health. The current scenario and future perspectives

15 Second Prologue Álvaro Franco-Giraldo 3 Global health is a concept that has shaped a renewed vision of the healthcare world or even a different academic trans discipline in recent times. Sometimes, it follows multilateral organizations such as the United Nations or the World Health Organization, while others, it is under the guidance of academic institutions like the School of Public Health at Universidad de Chile and civil society organizations like the Alianza Latinoamericana de Salud Global, among others, from both, the Global South and the Anglo-Saxon North global health has become a polysemic term in this context, as has been highlighted in several articles and publications within a diverse ideological mosaic. In the framework of the VI Latin American Congress on Global Health, Tuesca (Tuesca Molina, 2021), cited Solimano and Valdivia (Solimano, 2014) among others, recalling the Latin American notion of global health: “The notion of Global Health is embedded in an emerging academic conception, based on complexity, continuous transformation, and is considered a scientific and political emerging discipline that, based on evidence, rebuilds a new public health for the 21st century.” The same congress strengthens some purposes of global health, such as responding to the challenges of globalization, shaping its future perspective and establishing new governance in health for the sake of equity. Always recognizing health as a global public asset. In this line of thought, this prologue envisions a future global health perspective, considering different concepts and the issues surrounding the Global South countries and the Latin American region. In recent decades, global health has shaped an academic-political field as an intellectual struggle to ensure the prevalence of specific ideas over others. Within this field, we can highlight, at least, three trends: 1) the northern conception, influenced by globality, which implicitly carries the ideology of neoliberal globalization; 2) the perspective of Alasag, with its Latin American vision of global health mentioned above (Franco-Giraldo, 2016), and 3) more recently, the rise of the Global South vision, which encompasses initiatives that used to oppose neoliberal globalization and now assume the voice of the “periphery of the world system (...) Global 3 University Professor. Physician and public health specialist from the University of Antioquia (Medellin); Doctorate in Public Health from the University of Alicante (Spain); Specialist in State and Public Policy; Diploma in Philosophy; Hospital Administration Specialist, INSP Mexico; Diploma in Social Security, CIESS, Mexico. He was the dean of the National Faculty of Public Health in Colombia and vice-rector of the University of Antioquia (2015 to 2018). Currently, a university professor and Senior Researcher at Colciencias in the areas of Global Health, Public Policy, Primary Health Care, and Health Reform. GISCO Group, Universidad Visión de las Américas. He has published 2 books and several book chapters, and more than 120 academic articles in national and international journals.