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Young (and occasionally less young) researchers, mostly from LMICs, present their views on global health issues.
The Higher Education and Training HIV/AIDS Programme, more commonly referred to as HEAIDS has made significant strides in reaching young people at tertiary institutions (universities and colleges) in South Africa. I would describe a recent gathering as a historic moment in South African (SA) history. Over 2000 young people gathered to discuss th...
Earlier this week Mark Dybul likened Tedros’ team in Ethiopia, while he was Minister of Health, to Arsenal (the football powerhouse), “because they were young, dynamic – and incredibly effective.” You can’t do much wrong with that – Arsenal were indeed a stunning team back then. Since the mid-2000s, though, Arsenal (and its coach) ...
The Vancouver Health Systems Research Symposium (with its theme: Resilience and responsive health systems for a changing world) is long over – but resilience is everywhere, in academic, practitioner and policy literature (e.g. Kruk et al; Witter & Hunter; and statements by the WHO Director Generals immediately past, and newly inducted). Perhap...
Last weekend I was blown away by ‘Wonder Woman’. The movie, that is. Well, at least the first 120 minutes of it (and even the last 20 minutes the toddler in me enjoyed). True, I was also blown away by Gal Gadot, the female protagonist, but perhaps less than my two companions, my teenage son & one of my nephews (With these companions, I had b...
Before November 2016, it had been quite a while since I attended any health conference. I therefore was ecstatic when the opportunity came for me to attend the 4th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Vancouver as part of the West African Network of Emerging Leaders in health policy and systems (WANEL). At the time, I had no clue what ...
It always surprises me how easily some pundits get carried away, as if they’re politicians trying to frame the debate along lines they prefer. Give them a few “new trends”, let them compare these trends with some rather questionable “benchmarks” and hey, we wake up in a bright new world, with a ‘new golden decade’ just around the c...
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...