The 6th edition of the International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP6) was held between June 27th and 29th, 2023 in Toronto, Canada. ICPP6 had 1180 registered participants coming from 78 different countries. It is one of the world’s largest international events on public policy: no less than 1522 papers related to various public policies we...

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 c...

On June 17 2019, doctors across India in both public and private sectors boycotted non-essential medical services, responding to a call for a nationwide strike a few days earlier by the Indian Medical Association (IMA). The strike was in solidarity with junior doctors in West Bengal who were protesting a violent attack against doctors at a pub...

( this article was written before news broke on the Trumps testing positive) For anyone who had the misfortune of tuning into the first U.S. Presidential Debate earlier this week, the phrase, “elections have consequences” was likely one of the one true things uttered by Donald Trump during a furious, head-spinning 90-odd minutes. I t...

Several recent prominent global health events – the Health Systems Research Symposium in Liverpool, and the Women Leaders in Global Health event in London among them – demonstrated interest in the role of power in health systems and in health systems research.  A group of interested researchers and practitioners affiliated with SHAPES (Soci...

Last week, a few thousand researchers, policymakers and practitioners gathered in Seattle for the Annual Research Meeting of AcademyHealth, the leading organization for health services research in the U.S.  Health services research (or HSR as it is called in the U.S., which is confusing as it is also an acronym for health systems research) and ...

The global health community recently witnessed the first major test of the new WHO Director-General, Tedros Ghebreyesus’s nascent tenure. On October 22 2017, following several days of intense outrage and scrutiny, particularly in the news and on social media, the Director-General rescinded the appointment of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s longtim...

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’re through the looking-glass here, people. White is black and black is white.’ (JFK, 1991)   These past two weeks have felt surreal, and horrifying, to many of us living in the United States and presumably for many around the world. A new day, a new executive order, a new enemy. The immigration ban is the most recent, and most appallin...

HSG 2016 is off to a terrific start here in Vancouver.  On just the first day of the two-day satellite session period, the energy was palpable, with engaging sessions on topics ranging from the practicalities of achieving universal health coverage beyond borders, to the politics and governance of evidence. For a moment, you could almost forget ...