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Sara Van Belle

Sara Van Belle is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Belgium.
 

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The Eastern Mediterranean Region: Pioneering innovative solutions for health systems’ actionable governance

At the beginning of November, a group of policy-makers, experts and health practitioners convened in Beirut, Lebanon, to exchange on the Eastern Mediterranean region’s governance challenges, and to launch the first Regional chapter of the Health Systems Governance Collaborative. Countries in the Region have been grappling with health system g...

What does it take? Creative disruption and visible buy-in from current leadership (my take on WLGH18)

    The best statements collected (see also on Twitter hashtag #WLGH18): “Our ceiling must be the floor of those who come after us”. “If you don’t get a seat at the table, pull up a folding chair and if they won’t let you, just sit on the table” “When a man interrupts you, keep talking. Don’t make an eye contact & pretend you did...

Getting Serious About Gender Equality: Reflections on the Global Health 50/50 report

In the year 2017, “Gender equality” was undoubtedly one of the hot topics that was discussed and debated both on online spaces as well as in global events. As the year closed, the appointment of the UNICEF’s new executive director Henrietta Fore and 7 new women to WHO’s leadership team drew wide attention and accolades in global developm...

Rethinking health governance: Towards an inclusive and political health citizenship

Last week at the UHC Forum 2017 in Tokyo, the Health Systems Governance Collaborative and the UHC Partnership launched the Bold Moves Campaign and issued a manifesto calling for a “radical rethink” of governance and collaboration strategies. Emboldened and inspired by the manifesto, we decided right away to answer the call, and spin some ide...

In search of a global health community of “kick-ass” women

It appears these are the times of “angry young women” who are tired of being ridiculed, ignored, or worse, harassed or bullied… the conference on global health women leadership certainly came timely. 390 women and 20 (!) men gathered in Stanford on the 12th of October. And indeed, in the morning, there was a hoo-hoo-hoo-hooray atmosphere (...

Is there life beyond Kingdon? A plea for an innovative health policy agenda

In this short piece, I’ll try to critically self-reflect on my own practice as lecturer health policy analysis at the Institute of Tropical Medicine. (No worries, I’m a social scientist: we do self-reflection and meta-analysis for a living 🙂 ) For some time now, something in the back of my mind has been nagging me: the feeling that it ca...

Anthropology and global health: how to stay true to yourself/ -discipline

Last week, I attended the MAGic2015 conference at the University of Sussex (UK). Social anthropologists convened to discuss “Anthropology and Global Health: interrogating theory, policy and practice”.  (I will spare you my talk which was about methodology – in case you’re interested, we can discuss it someday over a good glass of wine)....