This course introduces students to global health governance and investment through an immersive, practice-oriented learning experience aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rather than focusing solely on theoretical frameworks, the course emphasizes how global health priorities are negotiated, financed, and implemented in real-world settings involving multiple actors, competing interests, and constrained resources.

Using global health challenges such as infectious disease control, health system resilience, and health equity as case studies, students will explore the roles of international organizations, national governments, donors, and the private sector. The course adopts collaborative learning and project-based learning (PBL) approaches, with more than 40% of class time dedicated to group work.

Key learning activities include simulated World Health Assembly negotiations, mock United Nations policy debates, global health investment pitch sessions, and structured policy dialogues. Mixed teams of SJTU students and international students will work together to identify a concrete SDG-related global health problem and develop a feasible policy or investment solution.

By the end of the course, students will not only understand how global health governance operates, but also gain hands-on experience in policy analysis, cross-cultural collaboration, and evidence-informed decision-making.

Instructor 1（PI）: Xiaoxi Zhang

Dr. Xiaoxi Zhang is an Associate Research Professor at the School of Global Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Currently, she serves as the member of Global Health Governance Expert Working Group for the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration of China, the consultant for WHO Academy and the World Bank, and the secretary general for One Health Action Commission. She has extensive publications in impactful academic journals including The Lancet Regional Health, The Lancet, Nature, Infectious Diseases of Poverty and One Health. Her work has been selected in the top 100 of China’s medical science papers of 2022 by the Chinese Medical Association. Before commencing Shanghai Jiao Tong University, she interned for the World Health Organization headquarter and Egypt country office. She has strong research interests in health governance and health policy research, and hopes her research could bring real-world impact to the system building of One Health. 

Instructor 2: Guohong Li

Guohong Li is a Professor and Deputy Dean of the School of Global Health, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and Deputy Director of the Yangtze River Delta Health Institute. She is a senior expert in health economics, health policy, and health system management. Dr. Li received her PhD in Health Economics from Fudan University and completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University. She has also served as a Research Fellow at the Harvard Global Health Institute. Her research focuses on health system reform, health financing, hospital management, and life-course health policy. She has led multiple major projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Education, the Gates Foundation, and the World Health Organization. She has received several Shanghai Municipal Government Decision Consulting Awards and Shanghai Medical Science and Technology Awards for her contributions to health policy research and practice.

Instructor 3: Lefei Han

Lefei Han is an Assistant Research Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Preventive Medicine from Sichuan University, a Master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Hong Kong, and a PhD in Epidemiology from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She was a visiting scholar at Columbia University. Dr. Han’s research focuses on infectious disease epidemiology, chronic disease epidemiology, and global health, with particular emphasis on respiratory infectious diseases such as influenza and COVID-19. She applies multidisciplinary approaches including epidemiological methods, geographic information systems, infectious disease modeling, big data analytics, and digital health technologies to study disease burden, transmission dynamics, and risk factors. She is the principal investigator of the Shanghai “Rising Star” (Qimingxing) project on population mobility and respiratory disease transmission and has participated in Belt and Road international cooperation projects on tropical disease control.

1.  Global health policy analysis

2.  Cross-cultural teamwork

3.  Negotiation and debate skills

4.  Evidence-informed decision-making

5.  SDG-oriented problem solving

Lecture / Group Discussion / Simulation / Project-Based Learning

Attendance and participation: 30%
Group policy simulation & presentation: 50%
Final policy brief or investment proposal: 20%

Name: Xiaoxi Zhang

Email: zhangxiaoxi@sjtu.edu.cn