Earlier this week, a group of 30 researchers, program implementers, and activists met in Washington, DC, to develop a research agenda on “community health worker voice, power, and citizens’ right to health.” The meeting was convened by Columbia University’s Averting Maternal Death and Disability Program and American University’s Accoun...

Pakistan, a lower-middle income country in South Asia, spends around three percent of its GDP on health, resulting in 39.5 US$ per capita health expenditure. Households’ out of pocket expenditures make up 60 percent of the total health expenditures in the country and catastrophic health expenditures amount to 70 percent of the economic shocks ...

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...

“We members of the Global Network for Health in All Policies commit to sharing the experience of institutionalizing the Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach and to facilitating and accelerating HiAP implementation for progressing the Sustainable Development Goals and Universal Health Coverage”. This bold mission statement of the newly laun...

The social sciences are critical to furthering our understanding of health policy and systems around the world. Political science, anthropology, sociology, economics, among other disciplines, provide a range of concepts that allow us to look at our research in a new light – offering new methodologies (process tracing from political science or ...

                                  “We lost an exemplary son, a respectful son-in law, a loving father, a caring husband, a kind brother, a sympathetic relative, a helping neighbor…” were the phrases passed by the dearest of Asmat Malik, who laid him in his grave with sobbing eyes on May 30, midnight. I was among hundreds of Asmat’s frie...

Sometimes a couple of tweets and quotes are all you need to discern a new global health mantra (or is it framing?).   So below I’ll just list a couple of tweets & quotes from the last week which for some reason pushed my buttons (Granted, that isn’t too hard).  I’ll leave you guessing who came up with these quotes, but it wasn’t Joe S...

After a whirlwind of recent travel across Southern Africa, the realities of the continent hit home and pretty much keep me awake at night, but also close to tears and highly angered when I think of developmental issues on the ground.  Against that backdrop, May 25th is  the perfect day for reflection and hopefully action, as it marks Africa Da...

As many of you know, global health is riding high on the G20 agenda. As Ilona Kickbusch notes this is largely thanks to Germany so it is no surprise then that the first ever G20 Health Ministers meeting is being  hosted by Germany on 19, 20 May.   At the meeting  in Berlin, themed “Promoting Health”,  G20 Health Ministers will tackle an...