Global health beyond geographical boundaries: reflections from global health education

► Our experience suggests that global health is often taught as 'public health somewhere else'.► However, the experience and demands of global health students and pressing global health issues in all settings require a different approach.► We, therefore, suggest that a more useful definition of global health is to move beyond the notion of geographical boundaries, with 'global' instead referring to a holistic, multidisciplinary perspective of health.► We suggest that current global health educational practices include a broader disciplinary scope and focus on educational examples from throughout the world, including one's own local context.