Globalisation and its impact on health: WACE Year 12 Health Studies Unit 4
“Analyse how globalisation, through trade, technology, migration and media, produces both positive and negative effects on health”
Globalisation is the growing interconnection of countries through trade, technology, travel, migration and media. It affects health in both directions: it spreads medicines, knowledge, vaccines and economic opportunity, but it also spreads unhealthy products and lifestyles, disease, and lets harmful industries operate across borders. The same forces can narrow inequities (sharing health technology) or widen them (concentrating profit and exporting harm to poorer countries). WACE wants you to analyse both sides for a given context.
What this dot point is asking
WACE expects a balanced analysis, not a one-sided claim that globalisation is good or bad. A strong answer explains a specific mechanism (trade, technology, migration or media), shows a positive and a negative health effect, and links it to inequity. Marks reward connected analysis tied to the stimulus, not a list of generic effects.
The mechanisms of globalisation
Trade moves goods, services and capital across borders. It can improve health by making medicines, medical equipment and a wider food supply available, and by raising incomes through economic growth. It can harm health by spreading cheap energy-dense processed food, tobacco and alcohol, and by allowing harmful industries to market in countries with weaker regulation.
Technology and communication spread health knowledge, telehealth, research and rapid disease surveillance, allowing a treatment or warning to reach the world quickly. The same channels spread misinformation and unrealistic body and lifestyle ideals.
Migration and travel connect populations. They support workforce mobility and the sharing of skills, but they also let infectious diseases cross borders rapidly, as global outbreaks have shown, and can strain or deplete health workforces when skilled workers leave lower-income countries.
Media and marketing operate globally, carrying health promotion and education worldwide, but also pushing the products and lifestyles of high-income consumer culture into communities that previously had healthier traditional patterns.
The defining feature of globalisation for this course is that the same process produces opposite health effects depending on what flows and who controls it. Open trade can deliver vaccines to a poor country and, through the same channels, flood it with cheap tobacco. Strong answers always weigh both the benefit and the harm rather than treating globalisation as simply positive or negative.
Positive effects on health
Globalisation has supported real gains. The rapid global sharing of vaccines, medicines and medical knowledge has saved lives and helped control diseases. Economic growth from trade has lifted incomes for many, improving access to food, education and services. Global communication enables coordinated responses to outbreaks and disasters, and spreads successful health promotion ideas between countries.
Negative effects on health
Globalisation has also spread risk. The global marketing of processed food, sugary drinks, tobacco and alcohol has driven rising rates of chronic disease, including in lower-income countries undergoing a shift away from traditional diets. Disease spreads faster through travel. Harmful industries can shift operations and advertising to countries with weaker regulation. And the benefits are unevenly shared, so wealthier countries and groups often gain more than poorer ones.
Globalisation and inequity
Whether globalisation narrows or widens health inequity depends on power and regulation. When the flow is health technology, knowledge and fair economic opportunity, inequities can narrow. When the flow is harmful products, exploitation and concentrated profit, inequities widen, because the harm lands hardest on the populations with the least power to resist it. This is the bridge to the rest of Unit 4: it explains why international agencies and global initiatives are needed to steer globalisation toward better, fairer health.
How this maps to the exam
Expect a stimulus describing a globalisation effect on a population, such as a trade agreement, a new technology, a migration pattern or a marketing campaign. Identify the mechanism, analyse a positive and a negative health effect, and judge whether it widens or narrows inequity for the group described.
A balanced analysis beats a one-sided claim. Take a single mechanism from the stimulus and work it through.
Name the mechanism and the context
The stimulus describes a trade agreement opening a developing country to global food companies. Name the mechanism (trade) and the population affected so the analysis stays concrete.
Give the positive effect with a reason
State a benefit: the agreement also lowers the cost of imported medicines and medical equipment, improving access to treatment and raising incomes through new jobs.
Give the negative effect with a reason
State the harm: the same opening floods the market with cheap sugary drinks and processed food marketed aggressively, shifting diets away from healthier traditional patterns and raising chronic disease.
Judge the net effect on inequity
Conclude by weighing the two: because the country has weak regulation and the harm lands hardest on lower-income groups, the trend is likely to widen inequity unless paired with policy (such as marketing limits). Weighing benefit against harm for the specific context is the analytical move examiners reward.
Students often argue one side only, praising shared medicine or condemning junk food marketing. The marks come from analysing both directions of the same force and linking the effects to inequity. Always weigh a benefit against a harm for the context in the stimulus.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of SCSA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
WACE 2021-style6 marksAnalyse how globalisation produces both positive and negative effects on health, using one mechanism (trade, technology, migration or media) as an example.Show worked answer →
A 6 mark analyse response needs one mechanism, a positive and a negative effect, and an inequity link.
- Choose a mechanism
- Trade, for example.
- Positive effect
- Trade makes medicines, vaccines and a wider food supply available and raises incomes through growth, improving access to services.
- Negative effect
- The same trade channels spread cheap energy-dense processed food, tobacco and alcohol, and let harmful industries market in countries with weaker regulation, driving chronic disease.
- Link to inequity
- Whether the net effect helps or harms depends on power and regulation: the harm lands hardest on populations with the least power to resist, so trade can widen inequity even as it lifts averages.
Markers reward a single mechanism analysed in both directions, with an explicit inequity link rather than a one-sided claim.
WACE 2023-style4 marksExplain how migration and travel can have both positive and negative effects on population health.Show worked answer →
A 4 mark response needs one positive and one negative effect.
Positive. Migration supports workforce mobility and the sharing of skills and knowledge, which can strengthen health systems and economies.
Negative. Travel lets infectious diseases cross borders rapidly, and the emigration of skilled health workers can deplete the workforce of lower-income countries.
Markers reward a clear positive and negative effect tied specifically to migration and travel.