Dr. Joia Mukherjee said the world is broken and full of inequality and injustice, as she animatedly addressed about 50 students and community members at the Atherton Hotel Saturday night.

Mukherjee, who is the Partners in Health medical director, addressed the necessity of solidarity and finding commonality when approaching global health during GlobeMed Penn State's First Annual Global Health Conference.

Partners in Health is a nonprofit health care organization with the "mission to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care," according to its Web site, www.pih.org.

"What is the commonality? We all have mothers; we all have fathers; we all have sisters; and we all have brothers. The fact that you can talk about your family, the fact that you can talk about your hometown, the humanness of all of us is the same," said Mukherjee, who was the keynote speaker.

GlobeMed is an organization that creates partnerships with other organizations to create a sustainable means of health care, said club President Liz Francis (senior-pre-medicine and Spanish).

"We do this by training students and mobilizing student action and connecting resources," Francis said.

The conference began Friday night with a screening of A Closer Walk, a film about AIDS in the world.

Saturday mostly consisted of various workshop sessions in the Henderson Building.

"The goals of the conference are to bring together interdisciplinary majors, to train dynamic leaders and to bring together global health experts and faculty in solidarity, so that we can begin to address the issue of global health together," Francis said.

One of the workshops, "Pathways to a Global Health Career," was aimed at increasing awareness of the many careers in global health. Susan Masse, deputy director for global health careers of the Global Health Fellows Program, spoke about the many diverse careers that are available in global health fields.

"It's constantly growing, as far as what the field looks like," Masse said.

She also provided advice on how to obtain a job and the importance of a professional appearance, especially online.

Another discussion dealt with the role of the university in global health.

"I think it's just a matter of getting out there and being loud enough for the administration to hear," said Peter Luckow, associate executive director of the GlobeMed central staff.

The conference concluded with a dinner and Mukherjee's keynote address.