Globalization

The Globalization has been viewed from a variety of perspectives and is at the center of overlapping debates. One debate focuses on the fundamental nature of globalization: is it essentially a narrowly-defined economic and financial process of integration of national economies into an international economy, or does it also include more broadly-defined interweavings of political, technological, and cultural processes. the globalization affects public health in a variety of ways because it has unleashed profound changes that have redefined how institutions at many levels–nation states, government agencies, transnational corporations, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations, public and private health care providers, community-based and other affinity-based organizations, communities, and households–operate and interact with one another.
At the same time, the world is currently in the midst of an epidemiologic transition, defined as:
the evolutionary changes in different societal settings from a situation of high mortality, high fertility, short life expectancy, young age structure, and predominance of communicable diseases; especially in the young, to one of low mortality, low fertility, increasing life expectancy, aging, and predominance of degenerative and man-made diseases, especially among the middle and old ages .

In other words, although much of the Third World still faces poverty and inequality , the impact of globalization is neither monolithic nor uniform, and local response is not only possible, but actually offers viable options to economic and political domination and cultural homogenization. In this view, for instance, local collective capacity in Ecuador continues to represent an effective counterweight to global forces such that globalization can, in effect, be shaped at the local level . This is so in part because local culture remains a vital force despite homogenizing influences and can even be brought to bear in order to assert and reassert local values and practices.