Decolonizing Global Health Journal Club
We invite you to read along and learn with us.
16 October 2023
Ali SH, Rose JR. The post-colonialist condition, suspicion, and social resistance during the West African Ebola epidemic: The importance of Frantz Fanon for global health. Soc Sci Med. 2022 Jul;305:115066. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115066. Epub 2022 May 23. PMID: 35636052.
11 September 2023
Hindmarch S, Hillier S. Reimagining global health: From decolonisation to indigenization. Glob Public Health. 2022 Jun 30:1-12. doi: 10.1080/17441692.2022.2092183. PMID: 35770706.
Chilisa, B. Decolonising transdisciplinary research approaches: an African perspective for enhancing knowledge integration in sustainability science. Sustain Sci. 2017. 12, 813–827. doi: 10.1007/s11625-017-0461-1.
14 August 2023
Naidu T. Southern exposure: levelling the Northern tilt in global medical and medical humanities education. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2021 May;26(2):739-752. doi: 10.1007/s10459-020-09976-9. Epub 2020 Jun 4. PMID: 32500281.
10 July 2023
Khan M, Abimbola S, Aloudat T, Capobianco E, Hawkes S, Rahman-Shepherd A. Decolonising global health in 2021: a roadmap to move from rhetoric to reform. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Mar;6(3):e005604. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005604. PMID: 33758016; PMCID: PMC7993212.
Chaudhuri MM, Mkumba L, Raveendran Y, Smith RD. Decolonising global health: beyond 'reformative' roadmaps and towards decolonial thought. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Jul;6(7):e006371. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006371. PMID: 34244205; PMCID: PMC8268885.
12 June 2023
Tuck, E. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society. 2012.
Iwelunmor J. The truth about decolonising global health worth spreading. Lancet. 2022 May 14;399(10338):1863-1864. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00832-7. PMID: 35569458.
27 March 2023
Binagwaho A, Ngarambe B, Mathewos K. Eliminating the White Supremacy Mindset from Global Health Education. Ann Glob Health. 2022 May 17;88(1):32. doi: 10.5334/aogh.3578. PMID: 35646611; PMCID: PMC9122008.
13 February 2023
Horton R. Offline: The myth of "decolonising global health". Lancet. 2021 Nov 6;398(10312):1673. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02428-4. PMID: 34742372.
“As medicine and global health struggle over decolonisation, we need to undertake a more realistic and rigorous analysis of where power lies politically, economically, militarily, and culturally. Changing the names of buildings and removing statues of scientists whose pasts we now deem unacceptable, as important as these symbolic measures might seem, risk becoming illusions of action, veiling the truth concerning new regimes of authority, dominance, and privilege. Decolonisation must mean much more.”
30 January 2023
Jenny Reardon and Kim TallBear, “Your DNA Is Our History”: Genomics, Anthropology, and the Construction of Whiteness as Property, Current Anthropology, Vol. 53, No. S5, The Biological Anthropology of Living Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks (April 2012), pp.S233-S245
5 December 2022
Jensen A, Lopez-Carmen VA (2022) The “Elephants in the Room” in U.S. global health: Indigenous nations and white settler colonialism. PLOS Glob Public Health 2(7): e0000719. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000719
21 November 2022
Mogaka OF, Stewart J, Bukusi E. Why and for whom are we decolonising global health? Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Oct;9(10):e1359-e1360. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00317-X. PMID: 34534477.
Reidpath DD, Allotey P. The problem of 'trickle-down science' from the Global North to the Global South. BMJ Glob Health. 2019 Jul 24;4(4):e001719. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001719. PMID: 31406597; PMCID: PMC6666820.
7 November 2022
Hunter S. Decolonizing White Care: Relational Reckoning with the Violence of Coloniality in Welfare. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17496535.2021.1990370
24 October 2022
Hirsch LA. Is it possible to decolonise global health institutions? Lancet. 2021 Jan 16;397(10270):189-190. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32763-X. PMID: 33453772.
Besson EK. Confronting whiteness and decolonising global health institutions. Lancet. 2021 Jun 19;397(10292):2328-2329. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01321-0. PMID: 34147146.
10 October 2022
Abimbola S, Pai M. Will global health survive its decolonisation? Lancet. 2020 Nov 21;396(10263):1627-1628. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32417-X. PMID: 33220735.
24 August 2022
Downs J. Never forget that early vaccines came from testing on enslaved people. 19 June 2022. https://www.statnews.com/2022/06/19/never-forget-that-early-vaccines-came-from-testing-on-enslaved-people/
“The modern world depends on vaccinations for a range of maladies, distributing them eagerly and praising their effectiveness, without acknowledging that the beginning of these medical interventions can be traced to slavery. It is no coincidence that the practice of artificially triggering the immune system to create antibodies developed at the same time when millions of people were held in bondage and had little to no say in what was done to their own bodies.”
Doucleff M. He discovered the origin of the monkeypox outbreak — and tried to warn the world. 29 July 2022. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/28/1114183886/a-doctor-in-nigeria-tried-to-warn-the-world-that-monkeypox-had-become-a-global-t
“Over the past few years, Ogoina says he has tried to warn health officials and scientists repeatedly that monkeypox had changed and was possibly spreading through sexual contact. At one international meeting, he tried to bring up the possibility of sexual transmission. Somebody told him to be quiet.”
Chappell B. Critics say ‘monkeypox’ is a racist name. But it’s not going away anytime soon. 1 August 2022. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/01/1113908154/critics-say-monkeypox-is-a-racist-name-but-its-not-going-away-anytime-soon
“Critics say the name "monkeypox" plays into racist stereotypes about Black people, Africa and LGBTQ people — and, they note, it falsely suggests monkeys are the main source of the virus.”
Bosely S. Global monkeypox vaccine race sparks fears that poorer nations will lose out. 1 August 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/aug/01/global-monkeypox-vaccine-race-sparks-fears-that-poorer-nations-will-lose-out
“A scramble for monkeypox vaccines is under way, with 35 countries vying for access to the 16.4m doses that exist so far, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and a risk that low-income countries may lose out.”
10 August 2022
Rasheed MA. Navigating the violent process of decolonisation in global health research: a guideline. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Dec;9(12):e1640-e1641. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00440-X. PMID: 34798014.
“Violent, marginalising behaviours can include continual questioning of the ability and technical skills of the staff from low-income countries. Other behaviours that undermine equitable collaboration include critical decisions being made about the study by high-income country researchers or travelling to the site without prior communication with the low-income country's principal investigator; publishing papers or deciding authorship without the knowledge of the low-income country's principal investigator; directly communicating with the field staff undermining the site principal investigator, and communicating unsubstantiated allegations against the principal investigator to the low-income country's university leadership as a means of coercive influence.”
27 July 2022
Khan T, Abimbola S, Kyobutungi C, et al. How we classify countries and people—and why it matters. BMJ Global Health 2022;7:e009704. doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009704
“Everyone in global health and global development (that includes us!) must be thoughtful about the terms we use on a daily basis, and understand their origins, meanings, and do our best to resist oversimplified dichotomies, and instead use nuanced terms that recognise the vast variations among countries and people, and respect how people want to be described.”
13 July 2022
Dada S, van Daalen KR, Barrios-Ruiz A, Wu K-T, Desjardins A, Bryce-Alberti M, et al. (2022) Challenging the “old boys club” in academia: Gender and geographic representation in editorial boards of journals publishing in environmental sciences and public health. PLOS Glob Public Health 2(6): e0000541. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000541
“This study demonstrates an evident imbalance in gender and geographic representation of journal editorial teams publishing in the intersection of environmental sciences and public health. The cross-sections of these fields, such as the field of planetary health, call for interdisciplinary, comprehensive and global solutions. Yet, how could one envision such solutions when a select, unrepresentative demographic controls the voice and narrative of what is considered scientific knowledge?”
29 June 2022
Lett E, Adekunle D, McMurray P, Asabor EN, Irie W, Simon MA, Hardeman R, McLemore MR. Health Equity Tourism: Ravaging the Justice Landscape. J Med Syst. 2022 Feb 12;46(3):17. doi: 10.1007/s10916-022-01803-5. PMID: 35150324; PMCID: PMC8853313.
“Authentic health equity researchers have always understood the need for emancipatory methods that include community partnership as a foil to extractive researchers who are opportunistic in their approaches without regard for the people impacted by the research.”
15 June 2022
Lencucha R, Neupane S. The use, misuse and overuse of the 'low-income and middle-income countries' category. BMJ Glob Health. 2022 Jun;7(6):e009067. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-009067. PMID: 35672116.
“The unjustified use of this classification can obscure both commonalities and important differences across country contexts. The ubiquitous use of this category has the potential to perpetuate and naturalise differences between countries based on income classification. In this paper, we urged scholars to use more targeted categorisation to avoid the overuse and misuse of LMIC as a category and to provide clear justification for its use when necessary.”
20 April 2022
Joanne Lu. Men — especially from rich countries — still fill the boards of global health groups. 8 April 2022. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/04/08/1089928585/men-especially-from-rich-countries-still-fill-the-boards-of-global-health-groups?t=1650438804374
"I knew there was inequality, but the magnitude of it was shocking," says Dr. Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). "For example, the statistic that more than 880 board seats out of 2,000 are occupied by Americans. That's 44% from one single country. How is that possible? This illustrates how bad the system is. This is not really global health."
6 April 2022
Sarah Kunz. Expat, migrant? Thinking through privilege in mobility. 11 February 2021. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/events/expat-migrant-thinking-through-privilege-mobility
“What does it mean to be an “expat” or a "migrant"? In this talk we will learn about the concept of privileged migration and think about the politics of migration categories and the relationship between mobility, (post)colonialism and racism.”
23 March 2022
Obasi AI, Barley A, Khan M. Racism in two UK global health institutions. Lancet. 2022 Mar 4:S0140-6736(22)00417-2. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00417-2. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35255265.
“To advance racial equity and combat racism,those in leadership positions in global health institutions will need to be courageous and show humility; listen to those who have been harmed; admit, reflect on, and learn from past wrongs; and recognise that diversity is not only a matter of fairness and social justice, it is also central to the vitality of science itself.”
9 March 2022
Braveman PA, Arkin E, Proctor D, Kauh T, Holm N. Systemic And Structural Racism: Definitions, Examples, Health Damages, And Approaches To Dismantling. Health Aff (Millwood). 2022 Feb;41(2):171-178. doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01394. PMID: 35130057.
“Systems, laws, and policies have created racialinequities in health and its determinants; sys-tems, laws, and policies can eliminate those in-equities. Strategies to dismantle systemic racismmust give high priority to addressing inequitiesin the key determinants of health—for example,economic security, housing security, education-al opportunity, and treatment by the criminaljustice system.”
23 February 2022
Smith E, Hunt M, Master Z. Authorship ethics in global health research partnerships between researchers from low or middle income countries and high income countries. BMC Med Ethics. 2014 May 28;15:42. doi: 10.1186/1472-6939-15-42. PMID: 24885855; PMCID: PMC4061921.
“Since most journals of international reputation in global health are written in English, this would systematically and unjustly exclude non-English speaking researchers even if they have substantially contributed to the research project.”
9 February 2022
Krieger N, Williams DR, Moss NE. Measuring social class in US public health research: concepts, methodologies, and guidelines. Annu Rev Public Health. 1997;18:341-78. doi: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.18.1.341. PMID: 9143723.
“The task of documenting and explaining social inequalities in health is a unique and defining responsibility of our field of public health. Absent adequate data on population patterns of health, disease, and well-being in relation to socioeconomic position, and as modified by social relations of race/ethnicity and gender, the public is deprived of knowledge essential to advance our collective welfare.”
26 January 2022
Jones CP. Levels of racism: a theoretic framework and a gardener's tale. Am J Public Health. 2000 Aug;90(8):1212-5. doi: 10.2105/ajph.90.8.1212. PMID: 10936998; PMCID: PMC1446334.
“I have developed a framework for understanding racism on 3 levels: institutionalized, personally mediated, and internalized. This framework is useful for raising new hypotheses about the basis of race-associated differences in health outcomes, as well as for designing effective interventions to eliminate those differences.”
12 January 2022
Koum-Besson, E. Power, Privilege and Racism: Understanding decoloniality in global public health. 4 October 2021. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/events/power-privilege-and-racism-understanding-decoloniality-global-public-health
15 December 2021
Independent review to address discrimination and advance anti-racism and equality at LSHTM. 8 December 2021. https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/aboutus/organisation/governance/equity-diversity-and-inclusion/racial-equality/independent-review
“This independent review found evidence of racism and inequalities which point to deeper, more structural problems within LSHTM that have negatively impacted the experiences of those within our organisation.”
17 November 2021
US CDC. Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communications. https://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/Health_Equity.html
“CDC’s Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication emphasize the importance of addressing all people inclusively and respectfully. These principles are intended to help public health professionals, particularly health communicators, within and outside of CDC ensure their communication products and strategies adapt to the specific cultural, linguistic, environmental, and historical situation of each population or audience of focus.”
3 November 2021
Lindqvist A, Gustafsson Sendén M, Renström EA. What is gender, anyway: a review of the options for operationalising gender. Psychology & Sexuality. 2020. doi: 10.1080/19419899.2020.1729844
“Regarding most variables, researchers strive to generate valid instruments with low measurement errors. Despite this, a traditional use of binary gender measurements prevails in most fields of social science, even though gender is not a binary category. In comparison, few researchers would argue that age is best measured with the two response categories ‘young’ and ‘old’, but gender is still most often measured as a dichotomous variable.”
20 October 2021
Boyd RW, Lindo EG, Weeks LD, McLemore MR. On Racism: A New Standard For Publishing On Racial Health Inequities. Health Affairs Blog. 2020 July. doi: 10.1377/hblog20200630.939347
“This practice undertheorizes racism as a clinically relevant cause of poor health and underelaborates solutions to racism as a health intervention. As a result, patients who suffer the physical tolls of inequities are doubly burdened by the emotional toll of researchers interested in documenting inequities but not addressing them.”
6 October 2021
Sbaiti M, Streule MJ, Alhaffar M, Pilkington V, Leis M, Budhathoki SS, Mkhallalati H, Omar M, Liu L, Golestaneh AK, Abbara A. Whose voices should shape global health education? Curriculum codesign and codelivery by people with direct expertise and lived experience. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Sep;6(9):e006262. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006262. PMID: 34475023.
“Beyond enhancing the validity and quality of GH education, collaborations may also provide a formative process for all partners involved. For students, a collaborative approach may help model how educators work explicitly towards addressing injustices in their practice. For GH educators, this means reflecting on the political economy of HE, their power in setting the curriculum and advocating for a more democratic GH education sector.”
22 September 2021
Naidu T. Says who? Northern ventriloquism, or epistemic disobedience in global health scholarship. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Sep;9(9):e1332-e1335. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00198-4. PMID: 34416216.
“Epistemic violence is the active oppression by powerful structures to displace the marginalised from socioeconomic and knowledge-creating institutions to suppress their political voices. This exclusion incessantly erases contributions from LMICs to global knowledge creation.”
8 September 2021
Bhakuni, H. Abimbola, S. Epistemic injustice in academic global health. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Aug; [Published online.] https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00301-6
“Knowledge systems are social systems, with their share of social prejudices and implicit biases that result in credibility deficits or interpretive marginalisation for members of marginalised groups. These prejudices and biases interfere with people's ability to participate fully and equally in knowledge production, use, and circulation.”
25 August 2021
Oti SO, Ncayiyana J. Decolonising global health: where are the Southern voices? BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Jul;6(7):e006576. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-006576. PMID: 34244206; PMCID: PMC8268905.
“Circling back to the central question of this commentary which asks: where are the Global South voices in this burgeoning global health decolonisation movement? Our response is that we are right here. We have chosen the uncertain but necessary path of moving from rhetoric to action. We simply do not have the luxury or privilege to do otherwise. We call on global health practitioners and institutions across the world to join us in this journey.”
11 August 2021
Opara, I. It’s time to decolonize the decolonization movement. PLOS Speaking of Medicine and Health Blog. 29 July 2021.
https://speakingofmedicine.plos.org/2021/07/29/its-time-to-decolonize-the-decolonization-movement/
“This will require an imagination revolution. A liberatory mindset reset. A paradigm cataclysm.
We must de-construct and re-construct global health spaces using transformative tools created by indigenous, grassroots, and majority world communities. The voices of the poorest, darkest-skinned, most disabled, women (cis and trans), and femmes must be centered at decision-making tables in policy, education, health, economy, & Justice. Tables built by them for them.
Nothing about them without them.”
28 July 2021
Kapilashrami A, Hankivsky O. Intersectionality and why it matters to global health. Lancet. 2018 Jun 30;391(10140):2589-2591. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31431-4. PMID: 30070211.
“Intersectionality can further the “leave no one behind” agenda by attending to multiple disadvantages (and simultaneous advantages) that underpin exclusion of certain population groups. The power analysis that an intersectional approach entails enhances understanding of not only who is left behind but why and how. Its application in global health requires greater attention to intergroup and intragroup differences, specific social positions (which exist at the crossing of multiple axes of inequalities), and the wider social processes and macrolevel factors that shape health.”
14 July 2021
Deps P, Cruz A. Why we should stop using the word leprosy. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 Apr;20(4):e75-e78. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30061-X. Epub 2020 Mar 2. PMID: 32135079.
“The Brazilian experience teaches us three important lessons: reducing stigma cannot happen without meaningful engagement and participation of the people who are affected; eliminating harmful stereotypes and discriminatory language needs bold decisions, such as changing the name of the disease; and change can only happen through sustainable strategies and over several generations. The fight against the disease can only succeed alongside the fight against stigmatisation.”
Butlin CR, Lockwood DNJ. Why we should stop using the word leprosy. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 Aug;20(8):900-901. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30526-0. Epub 2020 Jul 29. PMID: 32738236.
“The change from leprosy to Hansen’s disease substitutes a word representing misconceptions with a term that honours a man guilty of abusing a patient by unethical experimentation. The neutral term mycobacterial neurodermatosis would be a better choice.”
Deps PD, Cruz A. Why we should stop using the word leprosy. Lancet Infect Dis. 2020 Nov;20(11):1236. doi: 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30723-4. PMID: 33098776.
“Our main point was that dignified language must be adopted in clinical practice to counteract the stigma and discrimination, and that this language must be chosen in consultation with people affected by the disease.”
30 June 2021
Hommes F, Monzó HB, Ferrand RA, Harris M, Hirsch LA, Besson EK, Manton J, Togun T, Roy RB. The words we choose matter: recognising the importance of language in decolonising global health. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Jul;9(7):e897-e898. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(21)00197-2. PMID: 34143986.
“Jointly reflecting and changing the terms we use in global health when we talk, write, teach, and study is far from enough, but it is an essential part of the process of disrupting the power dynamics sustained through colonial continuity.”
16 June 2021
Eichbaum QG, Adams LV, Evert J, Ho MJ, Semali IA, van Schalkwyk SC. Decolonizing Global Health Education: Rethinking Institutional Partnerships and Approaches. Acad Med. 2021 Mar 1;96(3):329-335. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003473. PMID: 32349015.
“The term “global health” itself is fraught with assumptions and asymmetries. Colleagues in LMICs remind us that “global health”1 is a convenient but artificial construct developed by HICs to describe health care routinely practiced in LMICs. The implication that the discipline of global health adopted by HICs represents a reframing of LMICs’ reality should give us pause to question from whose perspective global health is being branded and pursued. In exploring this question, we must reexamine the role that colonialism continues to exert in tensions and assumptions in global partnerships. We must also consider what the growing awareness of colonialism’s impact and the associated calls for “decolonization” mean for global health practice and education.”
2 June 2021
Yam EA, Silva M, Ranganathan M, White J, Hope TM, Ford CL. Time to take critical race theory seriously: moving beyond a colour-blind gender lens in global health. Lancet Glob Health. 2021 Apr;9(4):e389-e390. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30536-2. Epub 2021 Feb 1. PMID: 33539778.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30536-2
“Current impassioned conversations about systemic racism present an opportunity to embrace race as an omnipresent factor influencing global health practice, research, and outcomes. This racial consciousness needs to be part and parcel of our efforts to address gender inequity worldwide. Now, more than ever, we must centre our work on people at the racial margins, in each of the intersecting racial contexts of the global health sector. Only then will we develop an essential sense of humility and self-awareness to be antiracist in our work.”
19 May 2021
Richardson E. Epidemic Illusions: On the coloniality of global public health – Eugene Richardson in conversation. 2021 Apr 28.
“Coloniality can be described as the matrix of power relations that persistently manifests despite a former colony’s achievement of nationhood. The framework attempts to capture the racial, political, economic, social, epistemological, linguistic, and gendered hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism that transcended “decolonization” and continue to oppress in accordance with the needs of pan-capital (i.e., economic and cultural/symbolic) accumulation.”
5 May 2021
Hirsch LA. Is it possible to decolonise global health institutions? Lancet. 2021 Jan 16;397(10270):189-190.
https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)32763-x
“Colonial administrators were replaced by technocratic experts: neither concerned with the socioeconomic realities on the ground and the messy afterlives of the targeted, yet often short-lived, disease eradication programmes they favoured. Modern global health institutions were designed to work within a system of inequality whose colonial roots were largely overlooked. It has been more comfortable to explain global health inequalities largely through biomedicine and culture than colonialism.”
21 April 2021
Pai M. Global health research needs a makeover. 2020 Aug 27.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgFKREe6Txc
“How can we scale mountains with the same old, colonial, inequitable systems?”
7 April 2021
Khan M, Abimbola S, Aloudat T, Capobianco E, Hawkes S, Rahman-Shepherd A. Decolonising global health in 2021: a roadmap to move from rhetoric to reform. BMJ Glob Health. 2021 Mar;6(3):e005604.
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2021-005604
“It is well documented—although often overlooked—that global health has evolved from colonial and tropical medicine, which were ‘designed to control colonised populations and make political and economic exploitation by European and North American powers easier’. The operations of many organisations active in global health thus perpetuate the very power imbalances they claim to rectify, through colonial and extractive attitudes, and policies and practices that concentrate resources, expertise, data and branding within high-income country (HIC) institutions.”
24 March 2021
Büyüm AM, Kenney C, Koris A, Mkumba L, Raveendran Y. Decolonising global health: if not now, when? BMJ Glob Health. 2020 Aug;5(8):e003394. doi: 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003394.
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003394
“Global health institutions based in the ‘Global North’, often lacking representation of key communities at the decision-making table, end up perpetuating a Eurocentric worldview that does not adequately consider most of the world’s needs. The notion of simply ‘copy-pasting’ strategies like lockdowns and social distancing measures does not work in spaces like cramped migrant worker dormitories, refugee camps, urban slums or anywhere else the poorest and most marginalised are forced to reside.”
10 March 2021
Passos MJ, Matta G, Lyra TM, Moreira MEL, Kuper H, Penn-Kekana L, Mendonça M. The promise and pitfalls of social science research in an emergency: lessons from studying the Zika epidemic in Brazil, 2015-2016. BMJ Glob Health. 2020 Apr;5(4):e002307.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002307
“The three workshops … allowed for open discussion about roles and responsibilities, including authorship on papers, and a strengthening of relationships between the researchers. In these meetings, we explicitly discussed power imbalances and roles, and our desire to do this project in a way that recognised what each of us brought to the project and how we would avoid neocolonial dynamics that can develop in such internationally funded projects.”
24 February 2021
Knight HE, Deeny SR, Dreyer K, Engmann J, Mackintosh M, Raza S, Stafford M, Tesfaye R, Steventon A. Challenging racism in the use of health data. Lancet Digit Health. 2021 Feb 3:S2589-7500(21)00019-4.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S2589-7500(21)00019-4
“Today, structural racism influences the data science workforce and the hierarchies within it, the datasets collected and who is represented within them, and the research questions pursued and prioritised. These factors mean that data science might not equitably benefit people from backgrounds that are underrepresented in the workforce and in the datasets.”
10 February 2021
Affun-Adegbulu C, Adegbulu O. Decolonising Global (Public) Health: from Western universalism to Global pluriversalities. BMJ Glob Health 2020;5:e002947.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-002947
“In many cases, however, the focus and scope of efforts to decolonise Global Health are on the Global South and on representation (diversity and equality), practice and the (re)production of knowledge. Yet decolonisation is not ‘merely about altering the content but also very much the term on which we are having the conversation’. This requires engagement with all the issues ‘that maintain the present asymmetrical global relations’”