This Viewpoint brings together insights from health system experts working in a range of settings. Our focus is on examining the state of the resilience field, including current thinking on definitions, conceptualisation, critiques, measurement, and capabilities. We highlight the analytical value of resilience, but also its risks, which include neglect of equity and of who is bearing […]
Calls for justice-oriented approaches to global health gained momentum and visibility during COVID-19. For many years scholars and community leaders have been discussing and debating the ideas of health equity and social justice, but with the COVID-19 pandemic the social and health injustices suffered by millions around the world came into a sharp relief in […]
In social systems or spaces, distance between the centre and the periphery breeds epistemic injustice. There are growing accounts of epistemic injustice in health-related fields, as in the article by Pratt and de Vries. The title of the article asks: ‘Where is knowledge from the global South?’ Like me, you may answer by saying: ‘Knowledge […]
Global Health’s Identity Crisis Lately, the field of global health–led by journals like the BMJ Global Health that often set the discourse–has opened itself up for introspection. Researchers and writers from around the world have been critiquing the field, its theory and praxis. As encouraging as this attempt at introspection and critique is, it runs the risk […]
New framework aims to improve inclusion and ethics in global research collaborations amid wider efforts to end exploitative practices. Exploitative research practices, sadly, come in all shapes and sizes. ‘Helicopter research’ occurs when researchers from high-income settings, or who are otherwise privileged, conduct studies in lower-income settings or with groups who are historically marginalized, with […]
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 […]
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. […]
In this blog Rosemary Morgan outlines the ways in which power and privilege can be manifested within the teaching of health systems research. This includes in teaching processes as well as institutions. It touches on efforts to decolonise curricula and whether traditional teaching reproduces inequities; explores how gender effects how students view their tutors; and introduces an […]