The King’s Global Health Institute (KGHI) is an interdisciplinary centre drawing together research, education and advocacy for global health at King’s.
Begun in 2017, it is the focal point for our large academic community of global health researchers and students. Professor Melanie Amna Abas was appointed Director of KGHI at the end of 2023, taking over from Professor Martin Prince.
Our range of disciplines makes King’s a unique place to study and conduct research in global health. These include outstanding centres and partnerships in social sciences, policy, palliative care, mental health, cancer, women’s health, ageing, surgery, infection, dentistry, arts, law and leading-edge technologies. We have grown the total value of our global health research grant income by over 10-fold since 2016. King’s is the sixth most active UK academic institution publishing with colleagues in Least Developed Countries.
At the same time we recognise that ingrained inequities in funding structures and research training perpetuate an imbalance between the global north and the global south. Communities affected by poor health are best placed to define what counts as a health issue to them, but historically global health movements have been dominated by those located far away from their reality. The way we do global health has to change, and be fit for purpose to tackle the emerging risks to public health of the next decade.
Our vision for King’s global health is to work in solidarity with global partners and communities to tackle major threats to public health while addressing ingrained inequities in access to resources, training, and knowledge
Key to our vison is finding ways to share benefits and resources equitably with partners in low-resource settings, and to increase accessibility of high-quality education so that people from all backgrounds can make a sustainable impact in global health.
Our mission is to connect people across King's with one another and with our global partner network, to enhance students’ and researchers’ experience of global health, and to seize opportunities to solve global health challenges together.
The KGHI sits in the School of Life Course and Population Sciences at King’s. It is managed by a core group of staff and supported by its membership across King’s and internationally. The Director, Melanie Abas is a psychiatric epidemiologist known internationally for applied clinical research in mood and trauma-related disorders in low-resource settings. She brings considerable experience of positively influencing policy change, research in complex interventions, research capacity building, and equitable partnerships.
We are embarking on a period of strategy development and welcome your contributions. A key aspect will be consulting with global partners and with people with lived experience of illness in low resource settings. This website will be updated as this process evolves. In the meantime, we invite and encourage you to read about our projects, events and educational opportunities.