The global mobility of people, capital, goods, and traditions has steadily increased during the past decades. To the health professionals, this has posed several new challenges. Obviously, clinicians will need to take care of patients and diseases originating from a wider range of backgrounds than before. But there are many additional consequences, as well. For instance, the local availability of drugs and vaccines may be influenced by international treaties on intellectual property rights or market analysis of large pharmaceutical companies – an issue that has hit hard e.g. HIV-infected individuals in low-income countries. Natural disasters or environmental health hazards often do not follow state borders. Medical research is becoming increasingly international. With all this development, health and health care can hardly be viewed purely from a national angle.

Despite the evident trend, health professionals in the industrialised countries are not very well prepared for the challenge of globalisation. The “modern” medical education has heavily concentrated on local surroundings. Other areas and countries have been covered mainly as a source of travel-related illnesses. With globalisation, this kind of approach has, however, become inadequate. In order to function effectively at home, abroad and in international duties, all physicians should know the epidemiology, diagnostics and management alternatives for the major global health problems, the worldwide distribution of available resources and the benefits and disadvantages of various health care systems. Part of the professionals would need deeper knowledge from selected details, for example on health systems, information management, health economics, or the role of international organisations in global health care provision.

To meet the challenge of globalisation, medical faculties in several European universities have recently founded new departments and established academic positions for global or international health. As the first medical school in Finland, University of Tampere Medical School founded such a professorship in international health in spring, 2005 (kansainvälisen lääketieteen professuuri). The position was filled on August 15, 2006, a date that also indicates the launching of the department of International Health at the University of Tampere Medical School (UTA-DIH).

In the founding document for a professorship in international health at Tampere University, the discipline was expected to include at least the following topics in its field of activities:

1. Global distribution of health, illness, and health related resources
   
2. Trends in and characteristics of globally most important health problems
   
3. Multiculturalism in health care
   
4. Emergency health care and travel medicine
   
5. International health activities and organisations
   
6. Health in low-income countries and health-related development collaboration