In this blog Benatar argues that a shift in attention from individual health to population health requires new ways of thinking inclusive of our interactions with the biosphere and planetary sustainability. He suggests that, “current global crises include the instability of a fraudulent global economic system; wide disparities in health, disease burdens, human well-being and suffering; […]
Given the unsatisfactory and unpredictable nature of progress, and the critical state of the world, ongoing consideration of alternative possibilities for better social systems continues. ‘Imperial common sense’ should be challenged and widespread support generated for use of our capacity to do better for global/planetary health through ‘rethinking the traditional bureaucratic model of postwar intergovernmental […]
In this article we argue that the social value of health research should be conceptualized as a function of both the expected benefits of the research and the priority that the beneficiaries deserve. People deserve greater priority the worse off they are. This conception of social value can be applied for at least two important […]
The Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research was themed around ‘Resilient and responsive health systems for a changing world.’ This commentary is the outcome of a panel discussion at the symposium in which the resilience discourse and its use in health systems development was critically interrogated. The 2014–15 Ebola outbreak in West-Africa added momentum for […]
This editorial identifies three areas of ethical tension in health systems research: 1) the dominance of global targets in priority setting which may crowd out health systems research that is responsive to local needs in favour of research on service delivery and scale up of interventions geared to support the achievement of global goals like […]
Recent scholarship has considered what, if anything, rich people owe to poor people to achieve justice in global health and the implications of this for international research. Yet this work has primarily focused on international clinical research. Health systems research is increasingly being performed in low- and middle-income countries and is essential to reducing global health disparities. […]
Health systems research is increasingly identified as an indispensable means to achieve the goal of health equity between and within countries. While conceptual work has explored what form of health systems research in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) is needed to promote health equity, there have been few attempts to investigate whether it is being […]
An ethical framework called “research for health justice” provides initial guidance on how to link health systems research in low- and middle-income countries to health equity. To further develop the largely conceptual framework, we tested its guidance against the experience of the Maternal and Neonatal Implementation for Equitable Health Systems (Manifest) project, which was performed […]