The Collective Blog

How can Health for All be achieved? Collective member Naoki Ikegami offers his thoughts on how to increase efficiency in health care.

How have the International Monetary Fund's austerity measures impacted health systems? Collective member Ramya Kumar takes a closer look at the case of Sri Lanka

How does the alcohol industry influence and shape policy in the Philippines? Collective member Gianna Gayle Amul shares her insight

Collective member Ron Labonté questions what the future might hold for us - and how we might try to change it. 

Collective Member Nora Kenworthy is the author of a new book out this week titled, Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare (MIT Press, 2024). The book offers an exploration of the growing phenomenon of crowdfunding for health and medical needs, written for generalist audiences. In it, Kenworthy explains why crowdfunding has become so popular, what it reflects about the political and economic factors that shape our health systems, and how it is ultimately exacerbating health inequities.

Collective member Robert Yates makes the case that universal health coverage can be both feasible and affordable, even during periods of crisis. 

How did countries with fragmented health care systems handle the Covid-19 pandemic? Collective member Fredline A. O. M’Cormack-Hale reflects on examples from Sierra Leone.

Around the world, animal farming is often presented as the main cause for the development of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). Aquaculture has become the fastest growing sector of food production in the world and most of the production takes place in low and middle-income countries. Collective member Marine Al Dahdah introduces a new research project which intends to assess the current regulation and controversies around shrimp farming in India. 

Ten years ago, The Lancet-UiO Commission on Global Governance for Health released a report on the political origins of health inequity. In this blog, Remco van de Pas takes stock of the commission's main themes and recommendations, and suggests some alternative pathways.

Can algorithmic justice guarantee health justice globally? Collective member Mary F. E. Ebeling reflects on how artificial intelligence could both help and hinder global health justice.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is a major player in global health governance, promoting the role of the private sector. But it appears to lack accountability – even to its own members

Collective member Deborah Gleeson highlights the barriers that intellectual property rights (IPRs) present in pandemic response. 

In this invited guest blog, Carolina Salgado discusses the power hierarchies that historically operate in global health and invites us to join her and other Latin American social scientists in practicing epistemic disobedience to Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism through a decolonial grammar.

What must be overturned to decolonize human rights? This was the topic of a conversation between Collective members in April.

The failure of global cooperation during the pandemic and the impacts of debt and austerity have heightened the urgency of expanding our understanding of freedom from violence to include structural violence, writes Collective member Alicia Ely Yamin.

Pandemic preparedness should be less about fire-fighting and more about building resilient public health systems. Here we have a lot to learn from countries in Southeast and East Asia, argues Collective member Manjari Mahajan. 

To achieve universal health coverage, a country needs sustained long-term financing to ensure equitable access to high-quality, affordable healthcare. In this blog, Collective member Jomo Kwame Sundaram shows how publicly provided healthcare is the best option compared to market solutions and argues that it should be an entitlement regardless of means. 

Collective member Susan Sell reflects on some of the features of contemporary capitalism that the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare, including monopoly dominance of intellectual property owners, labour precarity and structural racism.

In this blog, Collective member Remco van de Pas reflects on the capitalist and colonial academic publishing ‘machine’ that we have entrusted to make knowledge available to the world.  

The covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for globally equitable vaccine access. Building on previous analyses of COVAX’s vaccine donation efforts, we highlight six steps that can be taken today to improve vaccine sharing in future pandemics.

Collective member Ted Schrecker explains why the evidence of the questionable human benefits of globalization cannot be ignored.   

The decolonization of global health must include the struggle to cancel debt and reject austerity. Collective member James Pfeiffer explains why in this blog post. 

In this blog, Collective member Suerie Moon discusses how we can prevent the most powerful countries to be rule-makers, while smaller or less wealthy countries end up as rule-takers, in the development of a new pandemic treaty. 

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the need to strengthen India's public healthcare infrastructure, but the government is rather focusing on digitizing and privatizing the health system. 

Collective Co-Director Katerini Storeng presents her top three priorities for a reinvigorated global health research system.