Once again the global health community congregated in Bangkok for the annual Prince Mahidol Award Conference (28 Jan-2 Feb). I’ve chronicled my annual pilgrimage a few times before, calling attention to PMAC’s “elephant in the room” (2015) and examining its “political economy” (2019). While I’m still wishing for a future PMAC “pl...

The importance of historical and longitudinal perspectives is finally gaining attention in health policy and systems research (HPSR). HPSR is a field that is concerned with understanding and strengthening complex adaptive systems over time. Rather than magic bullets, our focus is on patterns of behaviour and long-term sustainable change. In HPS...

The field of Health Policy System Research (HPSR) offers us valuable theorisations and empirical work to guide us on how we can engage with the complex social, economic and political nature of health systems today. However, the field has not been able to fully grapple with theblind spots that are ever present in our reality. This is why we argue...

After heavy rainfall hit most parts of Kenya in the past two months, and the destruction that came with it, with abundant floods and landslides in more than a few regions, most people welcomed the dry season in my country with a feeling of relief. The feeling was short-lived, however, as soon some counties in Kenya started receiving uninvited gu...

In order to tackle climate change (and a bunch of other wicked challenges), sustainable development has been put high on the global agenda in recent years – with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda obviously being the most prominent example. SDG 12, sustainable food production and consumption, is one of the core sustainable develop...

One week on from the British elections, it is still a powerful talking point for people in the UK, from all parts of the political spectrum and both on social media and in real-life. The campaign was uncharacteristically divisive and acrimonious, so I suppose it was inevitable that whatever way the election went, some people would end up being v...

The issue of work-life balance has recently been highlighted in a number of global health discussions. For example, earlier this year, the Wellcome Trust quite publicly explored whether to introduce a 4-day working week (but decided against this). The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation introduced a 52-week paid parental leave (but then halved this ...

During the closing plenary of the 2nd International Symposium on Community Health Workers (CHW) held in Dhaka, Bangladesh, from 22 to 24 November 2019, the following statement was made: “CHWs, Community Based Organisations (CBOs), leaders and other community actors, including families, can be an effective resource in fragile settings.” This ...

(Cross-posted from the BMC Blog where it was published first) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), has stated that universal health coverage (UHC) is “a political choice”. But what does it mean to say that UHC is political? The politics of UHC Universal health coverage (UHC) is a key polic...