in the 21st century, distinctions and boundaries between global health, international politics, and the broader interests of the global community are harder to define and enforce than ever before. as a result, global health workers, leaders, and institutions face pressing questions around the nature and extent of their involvement with non-health endeavors, including international conflict reso...

The global health agenda has been dominating the current global health policy debate. Furthermore, it has compelled countries to embrace strategies for tackling health inequalities in a wide range of public health areas. The article by Robert and colleagues highlights that although globalization has increased opportunities to share and spread ideas, there is still great asymmetry of power accor...

Political scientists bring important tools to the analysis of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, particularly a focus on the crucial role of power in global health politics. We delineate different kinds of power at play during the COVID-19 crisis, showing how a dearth of compulsory, institutional, and epistemic power undermined global cooperation and fuel...

Shiffman has argued that some actors have a great deal of power in global health, and that more reflection is needed on whether such forms of power are legitimate. Global health is a new and evolving field that builds upon the historical fields of public and international health, but is more multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary in nature. This article argues that the distribution of power ...

Solomon Benatar’s paper “Politics, Power, Poverty and Global Health: Systems and Frames” examines the inequitable state of global health challenging readers to extend the discourse on global health beyond conventional boundaries by addressing the interconnectedness of planetary life. Our response explores existing models of international cooperation, assessing how modifying them may achieve the...

This paper critically examines some of the assumptions and politics which underlie the global mental health (GMH) movement; and explores the issue of cultural awareness within western psychiatric thinking and practice. The way distress is labelled has a range of consequences for the individual, their family and society, as well as those who may control or negotiate the descriptors used, the act...

The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for health correctly concluded that: 'with globalization, health inequity increasingly results from transnational activities that involve actors with different interests and degrees of power'. At the same time, taking up that Commission's focus on political determinants of health and 'power asymmetries' requires recognizing the inter...

gorik ooms recently made a strong case for considering the centrality of normative premises to analyzing and understanding the underappreciated importance of the nexus of politics, power and process in global health. this critical commentary raises serious questions for the practice and study of global health and global health governance. first and foremost, this commentary underlines the impor...

In the 21st Century, distinctions and boundaries between global health, international politics, and the broader interests of the global community are harder to define and enforce than ever before. As a result, global health workers, leaders, and institutions face pressing questions around the nature and extent of their involvement with non-health endeavors, including international conflict reso...