With the objective of creating a movement for the promotion of global health, Medici con l'Africa Cuamm with 30 partners and European associates representing the health community realized the project "Equal opportunities for health: action for development", co-financed by the European Commission. As part of the project, a conference was organized in Padua, Italy, on 3-4 April 2009 with a view to developing a plan of action to promote and teach global health. The 150 or so international representatives of the health community attending developed concrete proposals and actions in 4 working groups focusing on: (1) global health teaching at university level; (2) lifelong learning; (3) international health cooperation, and (4) mobilising financial and human resources. The background paper for discussion is published here for Working Group 1. It attempts to define global health and to examine the consequences of such a definition on the study plans of university faculties of medicine and health sciences. From a proposal to simply define global health as health without borders, the paper examines how national borders are no longer a barrier to the spread of diseases, of health determinants, of health care and health policies, of health workers and of human rights' violations, and how national borders should no longer be a barrier to the spread of health. A plan of action for applying these understandings to the teaching of global health in schools of medicine and human sciences is presented.