By highlighting four key emerging and persistent global health challenges:

1. The unavoidable health impacts of climate change (heat-stress, extreme cold, flooding, rising incidence of vector borne-diseases)
2. The prevailing sanitation crises (causing preventable deaths and disease outbreaks, contributing to the poverty trap, affecting economic output, polluting the environment)
3. The global dietary paradox (obesity, vs. malnutrition - rising global demand for animal products, fats and sugar and its effect on people and the environment, food insecurity and its effects on health, development and environment)
4. The health externalities of global consumerism and manufacturing, (the human health effects and environmental pollution caused by the electronics we use, produce and waste)

The course deals with the connections between three important areas of study in sustainability studies: development, environment and global health to provide a deeper understanding of the importance of good health for social, economic and environmental sustainability.