The International Health Policies (IHP) newsletter started in 2009-2010, back then as an initiative of the health policy unit at ITM, with David Hercot and Wim Van Damme as the key initiators. The Belgian Development Cooperation (DGD) has supported us from the start, and we’re very grateful for that. Very early on, a  weekly newsletter focusi...

I feel compelled to react on the recent  blog  by Willem Van De Put and Werners Soors (“The ITM symposium on 40 years PHC: is there a doctor in the house?”) , in which they gave their take on the ITM symposium on 40 years Primary Healthcare (October 23rd ), and more specifically to their statements regarding the last panel discussion. ( I ...

Over the past few weeks, I have been following, with some discomfort occasionally, the conversations around women’s leadership in global health, taking place in the context of the Women Leaders in Global Health Conference (WLGH) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We must be concerned that most of the conversation on gender ...

At the global level, awareness is growing on the need to include gender considerations in health policy formulation, implementation, and research. Scientific publications, blogs, and to some extent even media coverage are drawing increasing attention to the fact that while women represent half of the global population, their voice is largely und...

Last summer we decided to evaluate the newsletter. We wanted to know more about our readers, and check if we were meeting our focal goal of providing a weekly update on global health policy & governance in the health SDG era, with focus on health policy & systems research, all this of course while “Switching the Poles”. The evaluation was a ...

Antonio Gramsci wrote around 1930 that the crisis precisely consists in the fact that “The old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” This quote was used by Jane Kelsey, a law professor from the University of Auckland, during the opening plenary session of the 4th People’s Heal...

Recently, the WHO Regional Office for Africa held a Forum entitled “Health systems strengthening for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (12-16 November 2018).  The Forum brought together health systems and services (HSS) focal persons in WHO country offices, and Direct...

As was  covered just last week,  the 6th  Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH) venture (EV2018) took place in Liverpool last month, just before the 5th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research.  By now, EV4GH is a global health network of almost 300 emerging and emerged voices from across the world, a network that has not only grown ...

    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...