Correspondence to Dr. Sara Van Belle; svanbelle@ itg. be In this journal, Lee and Smith lament the lack of institutional innovation in the WHO, arguably the crux of global health governance (GHG). They contend that WHO can only regain its leadership role if it focuses on ‘enabling consensus in a nimble and timely manner’ and foremost, if it supports ‘mechanisms to facilitate the formation of ne...

Drawing on an in-depth analysis of eight global health networks, a recent essay in this journal argued that global health networks face four challenges to their effectiveness: problem definition, positioning, coalition-building, and governance. While sharing the argument of the essay concerned, in this commentary, we argue that these analytical concepts can be used to explicate a concept that h...

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ilona kickbusch’s thought provoking editorial is criticized in this commentary, partly because she fails to refer to previous critical work on the global conditions and policies that sustain inequality, poverty, poor health and damage to the biosphere and, as a result, she misreads global power and elides consideration of the fundamental historical structures of political and material power tha...

in his perspective “navigating between stealth advocacy and unconscious dogmatism: the challenge of researching the norms, politics and power of global health,” ooms argues that actions taken in the field of global health are dependent not only on available resources, but on the normative premise that guides how these resources are spent. this comment sets out how the application of a predomina...

in this commentary, we endorse concerns about the health impact of the trans-pacific partnership (tpp), paying particular attention to its mechanisms for investor state dispute settlement. we then describe the different, judgeled approach being advocated by the european commission team negotiating the trans-atlantic trade and investment partnership, arguing that, while not perfect, it offers si...

In this paper we emphasize the importance of questioning the global validity of significant concepts underpinning global health policy. This implies questioning the concept of global health as such and accepting that there is no global definition of the global. Further, we draw attention to ‘quality’ and ‘empowerment’ as examples of world-forming concepts. These concepts are exemplary for the g...

politics play a central part in determining health and development outcomes as gorik ooms highlights in his recent commentary. as health becomes more global and more politicized the need grows to better understand the inherently political processes at all levels of governance, such as ideological positions, ideas, value judgments, and power. i agree that global health research should strengthen...

Jeremy Shiffman’s editorial appropriately calls on making all forms of power more apparent and accountable, notably productive power derived from expertise and claims to moral authority. This commentary argues that relationships based on productive power can be especially difficult to reveal in global health policy because of embedded notions about the nature of power and politics. Yet, it is e...

Global health networks—webs of individuals and organizations linked by a shared concern for a particular condition—have proliferated over the past quarter century. In a recent editorial in this journal, I presented evidence that their effectiveness in addressing four challenges—problem definition, positioning, coalitionbuilding and governance—shapes their ability to influence policy. The editor...