Developing an agenda for the decolonization of global health

By David McCoy, Anuj Kapilashrami, Ramya Kumar, Emma Rhule , Rajat Khosla

Colonialism, which involves the systemic domination of lands, markets, peoples, assets, cultures or political institutions to exploit, misappropriate and extract wealth and resources, affects health in many ways. In recent years, interest has grown in the decolonization of global health with a focus on correcting power imbalances between high-income and low-income countries and on challenging ideas and values of some wealthy countries that shape the practice of global health. The authors argue that decolonization of global health must also address the relationship between global health actors and contemporary forms of colonialism, in particular the current forms of corporate and financialized colonialism that operate through globalized systems of wealth extraction and profiteering. They present a three-part agenda for action that can be taken to decolonize global health. The first part relates to the power asymmetries that exist between global health actors from high-income and historically privileged countries and their counterparts in low-income and marginalized settings. The second part concerns the colonization of the structures and systems of global health governance itself. The third part addresses how colonialism occurs through the global health system. Addressing all forms of colonialism calls for a political and economic anticolonialism as well as social decolonization aimed at ensuring greater national, racial, cultural and knowledge diversity within the structures of global health.

Read the article here.

October 30, 2025

Yesterday (2004)

Written and directed by Darrell Roodt

Yesterday is a 2004 South African drama film that tells the story of a young mother, Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo), who discovers she has AIDS. Her husband, a migrant mine labourer, rejected her despite being the one that infected her. Her ambition is to live long enough to see her daughter, Beauty, go to school.

This film is the first commercial feature-length production in Zulu. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 77th Academy Awards and won Best Sound and Best Editing at the inaugural Africa Movie Academy Awards.

Watch the film here.

December 3, 2024

West African views of ethics and fairness in healthcare

By Ayodeji Adegbite and David Bannister

This seminar uses history to examine ideas of ethics and fairness from West Africa: Ayodeji Adegbite focuses on mid-20th century Nigeria to consider African challenges to the Euro-American ethics of global health, and David Bannister looks at the role of the past in shaping current views of fair healthcare in Ghana.

The seminar focuses on two themes:

African medical practitioners and disease control in Africa: an ethical anchor for a decolonial global health  
Fairness in Time: Generational experience and moral economies of state healthcare in Ghana

Reas more and watch seminar here.

December 4, 2023

Troubling Objectivity: The Promises and Pitfalls of Training Haitian Clinicians in Qualitative Research Methods

By Pierre Minn

Building research capacity is a central component of many contemporary global health programs and partnerships. While medical anthropologists have been conducting qualitative research in resource-poor settings for decades, they are increasingly called on to train “local” clinicians, researchers, and students in qualitative research methods. In this article, I describe the process of teaching introductory courses in qualitative research methods to Haitian clinicians, hospital staff, and medical students, who rarely encounter qualitative research in their training or practice. These trainings allow participants to identify and begin to address challenges related to health services delivery, quality of care, and provider-patient relations. However, they also run the risk of perpetuating colonial legacies of objectification and reinforcing hierarchies of knowledge and knowledge production. As these trainings increase in number and scope, they offer the opportunity to reflect critically on new forms of transnational interventions that aim to reduce health disparities.

Epistemic injustice in academic global health

By Himani Bhakuni and Seye Abimbola

This Viewpoint calls attention to the pervasive wrongs related to knowledge production, use, and circulation in global health, many of which are taken for granted. We argue that common practices in academic global health (eg, authorship practices, research partnerships, academic writing, editorial practices, sensemaking practices, and the choice of audience or research framing, questions, and methods) are peppered with epistemic wrongs that lead to or exacerbate epistemic injustice. We describe two forms of epistemic wrongs, credibility deficit and interpretive marginalisation, which stem from structural exclusion of marginalised producers and recipients of knowledge. We then illustrate these forms of epistemic wrongs using examples of common practices in academic global health, and show how these wrongs are linked to the pose (or positionality) and the gaze (or audience) of producers of knowledge. The epistemic injustice framework shown in this Viewpoint can help to surface, detect, communicate, make sense of, avoid, and potentially undo unfair knowledge practices in global health that are inflicted upon people in their capacity as knowers, and as producers and recipients of knowledge, owing to structural prejudices in the processes involved in knowledge production, use, and circulation in global health.

Read article here.

November 9, 2023

Is it possible to decolonise global health institutions?

By Lioba A Hirsch

In the past year, decolonising global health has gained prominence. Much of this movement has come from students of global health in high-income countries and preceded the recurrence of Black Lives Matter movements after the violent murder of George Floyd. Black Lives Matter and Decolonising Global Health movements have managed to shake schools of global health if not to their core then at least awake. As a reaction schools of global health have made statements about racial equality and have avowed to address racism, increase staff and student diversity, and to train their staff in the art of decolonisation. I have been involved in these processes of decolonisation at my own institution. Yet I also view such efforts critically.