background negotiations surrounding the trans-pacific partnership (tpp) trade and investment agreement have recently concluded. although trade and investment agreements, part of a broader shift to global economic integration, have been argued to be vital to improved economic growth, health, and general welfare, these agreements have increasingly come under scrutiny for their direct and indirect...

there were once again high expectations that a major global health event - the ebola virus outbreak of 2014-2015 - would trigger meaningfully world health organization (who) reform and strengthen global health governance (ghg). rather than a “turning point,” however, the global community has gone back to business as usual. this has occurred against a backdrop of worldwide political turmoil, cha...

the editorial by jeremy shiffman, “knowledge, moral claims and the exercise of power in global health”, highlights the influence on global health priority-setting of individuals and organizations that do not have a formal political mandate. this sheds light on the way key functions in global health depend on private funding, particularly from the bill & melinda gates foundation.

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...

medical mobilities offer both opportunities and challenges. this tension follows the same ratio as many other historic fora, but offers at the same time a sustainable equilibrium. multi-disciplines are, therefore, the key to the medical lifeworld for the global health and well-being of transnational health users around the globe.

this article contends that legitimacy in the exercise of power comes from the consent of those subject to it. in global health, this implies that the participation of poor country citizens is required for the legitimacy of major actors and institutions. but a review of institutions and processes suggests that this participation is limited or absent. particularly because of the complex political...

politics is not the ghost in the machine of global health policy. conceptually, it makes little sense to argue otherwise, while history is replete with examples of individuals and movements engaging politically in global health policy. were one looking for ghosts, a more likely candidate would be democracy, which is currently under attack by a new global health technocracy. civil society moveme...

members of the 67th world health assembly in 2014 were presented with a framework document to guide world health organization (who) engagement with non-state actors, a key part of who reform kick-started in 2011. according to this document, non-state actors include four distinct constituencies: i) nongovernmental organizations (ngos), ii) private sector entities; iii) philanthropic foundations;...

global health research is essentially a normative undertaking: we use it to propose policies that ought to be implemented. to arrive at a normative conclusion in a logical way requires at least one normative premise, one that cannot be derived from empirical evidence alone. but there is no widely accepted normative premise for global health, and the actors with the power to set policies may use...