Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide,  with around 80% of NCD deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). An important obstacle to addressing the growing burden of NCDs in LMICs is the limited set of indicators to monitor NCD service coverage and the quality of primary heal...

“Prevent, detect, contain and treat”: following the pillars of its pandemic preparedness and response framework, Germany’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has been praised for its low fatality rate.  However, the conventional prioritization of immediate biomedical needs as the primary guiding principle in outbreak management arguably cam...

10 years ago, as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were coming to an end and millions of people were participating in consultations to develop the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a global health colleague sent me a link to the IHP newsletter with a message “this is good stuff, read this.” I’ve since followed the newsletter to t...

The climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical escalation are evidence that our ability to respond effectively to large-scale threats to population health and humanity is not limited by our technical know-how. Instead, our ability to navigate complex political terrain appears to be the main (and perpetual) stumbling block. Health policy ...

Intro (by Farchanda) This year, the Face-to-face (F2F) part of the Emerging Voices (EV) venture was held in Medellin, Colombia from October 20-30, in the run-up to the 7th Global Health Systems Research symposium in Bogota. ‘Decolonizing Global Health’ is such a hot topic nowadays, that it could impossibly be left out of the ‘Big Talks’...

We are pleased to announce the IHP call for correspondents 2023. Each year, the weekly International Health Policies Newsletter & network issues a call for correspondents to contribute to the newsletter. The weekly IHP newsletter/digest is a flagship knowledge management activity of the IHP network, funded by the Belgian Government (DGD), provid...

Trust in the patient-provider relationship is a crucial aspect of providing good care. However, in areas with high levels of systemic poverty this trust is fragile and more challenging to establish. Additionally, many health systems in the Global South are vestiges of colonial health structures that served to support first and foremost the colon...

It was a Sunday evening in Mumbai, end of October, when Spain edged past Colombia to retain the under-17 Women’s football World Cup.  In India – a country that loves cricket, already there was football fever, weeks before other countries and regions in the world!   Earlier in October, I had been listening (during a WHO FB Live chat) to Dalim...

Courtrooms are not the first place our minds go when thinking about venues for “routine” policy engagement in the health sector. And yet, a growing body of work suggests that courts are tied up in a vast number of threads in health policy in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), in some cases building on foundational judgments in many co...