Global Health Inequalities and Justice

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Policy System ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Health Justice ◽  
Shared Health Governance

This chapter discusses challenges of global health inequalities in the current global health policy system. It then describes provincial globalism and a shared health governance framework as approaches to these challenges. Moral philosophers have for some time argued that global poverty and associated human suffering are universal concerns and that there is a moral obligation, beyond matters of charity, for wealthier countries to do more. Being serious about addressing the problem of global health inequalities requires developing a conception of global health justice. Moreover, addressing global health inequalities requires a reexamination of the norms and principles underlying global institutions in order to offer proposals for a better global health policy. This chapter sketches analytical components of provincial globalism, a framework that takes individuals to be the moral unit in both domestic and global contexts and that improves the prospects of alleviating global health inequalities. Provincial globalism promotes the realization of individuals’ health capabilities and supports a shared health governance that enables institutions to reexamine the objectives, policy goals, and decision-making procedures of the global health architecture. Shared health governance, in turn, provides standards for regulating global and domestic institutions and practices to create the conditions for realizing individuals’ health capabilities.

Divergent Perspectives in Global Health Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Global Public Good ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Self Interest

The global health governance (GHG) literature frames health variously as a matter of security and foreign policy, human rights, or global public good. Divergence among these perspectives has forestalled the development of a consensus vision for global health. Global health policy will differ according to the frame applied. Fundamentally, GHG today operates on a rational actor model, encompassing a continuum from the purely self-interest-maximizing position at one extreme to a more nuanced approach that takes others’ interests into account when making one’s own calculations. Even where humanitarian concerns are clearly and admirably at play, however, the problem of motivations remains. Often narrow self-interest is also at work, and actors obfuscate this behind altruistic motives.

The Pan American Health Organization and the Mainstreaming of Human Rights in Regional Health Governance

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 356-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Mason Meier ◽  
Ana S. Ayala
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
World Health ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
Regional Health ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Pan American ◽  
Health Organization

In the development of a rights-based approach to global health governance, international organizations have looked to human rights under international law as a basis for public health. Operationalizing human rights law through global health policy, the World Health Organization (WHO) has faced obstacles in efforts to mainstream human rights across the WHO Secretariat. Without centralized human rights leadership in an increasingly fragmented global health policy landscape, regional health offices have sought to advance human rights in health governance and support states in realizing a rights-based approach to health. Examining the efforts of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), this article explores the evolution of human rights in PAHO policy, assesses the mainstreaming of human rights in the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (Bureau or PASB), and analyzes the future of the rights-based approach through regional health governance.

Global Health Governance as Shared Health Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Health Equity ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Global Health Governance ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
Potential Health ◽  
Health Justice ◽  
Shared Health Governance ◽  
Global Health Justice

PG as a global health justice theory joins with the theory of SHG to apply justice principles to health governance. SHG rests on a genuine commitment among global health actors to achieve health justice as opposed to pursuing narrow self, group, or state interests alone. SHG elucidates standards of global and domestic responsibility and accountability for health equity. It proposes a common conceptual and policy framework with a set of distinct but complementary responsibilities for governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector, and individuals themselves. In the SHG framework, the state has duties to create conditions in which all individuals have the opportunity to be healthy and to reduce and prevent the shortfall between actual and potential health within their countries. Global actors have a duty to help shape conditions in which countries can develop and flourish and promote the health of their populations.

Global Health Justice and Governance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Prah Ruger
Keyword(s):  
Global Health ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Current System ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Health Justice ◽  
Shared Health Governance ◽  
Demand For Health ◽  
Global Health Justice

Critical and dangerous threats imperil global health. Serious health disparities, hazardous contagions that can circle our globalized planet in hours, a bewildering confusion of health actors and systems all combine in a kaleidoscopically fragmented, incoherent, and unjust global health enterprise. While a growing body of work in global justice and international relations explores moral issues and global governance, very little of it has linked principles of global health justice to governance to create a theory of global health. But the dangers confronting the world make a theoretical framework essential, to enable analysis of the current system and to ground proposals to reform it and align it with moral values. This book presents a global justice theory—provincial globalism (PG)—and links it with the theory of shared health governance (SHG) to offer an alternative to the prevailing modus operandi, which has manifestly failed to serve global health. The PG/SHG framework advances health capability, and specifically the capability to avoid premature death and preventable morbidity, as the proper goal of health systems and policy. This framework sees human flourishing as global society’s end goal and proposes an ethical demand for health equity as the criterion for evaluating global health policy and law. It examines the current actors in global health, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and proposes assigning responsibilities to actors at all levels according to their functions and capabilities.

Global health policy in Sustainable Development Goals

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meri Koivusalo
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
World Health Organisation ◽  
World Health ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Development Goals

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent global policy goals in contrast to Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), which had developmental focus. This is the global potential of SDGs for global health policy. However, the large number of goals bear the risk of prioritisation between different goals and broad global frameworks and specific targets may not be useful in shaping policy guidance and global approaches in policy areas, where we already have a global institutional and normative presence. In contrast to some other global social policy areas, global health policy has also something to lose. SDGs are thus likely to be better for global health in other policies, than for global health policy priorities, institutions and practice. This is a particular concern for the global health policy role of the World Health Organisation, global health policies seeking normative action as well as for such health policy priorities, which contrast or conflict with other policy areas or strong corporate interests. This has particular relevance to multistakeholder partnerships and the role of private sector in implementation of SDGs.

Operationalizing the Ethical Review of Global Health Policy and Systems Research: A Proposed Checklist

2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-122
Author(s):  
Abbas Rattani ◽  
Adnan A. Hyder
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Global Health ◽  
Ethical Review ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Global Health Policy ◽  
Health Policy And Systems

AbstractThere has been growing consensus to develop relevant guidance to improve the ethical review of global health policy and systems research (HPSR) and address the current absence of formal ethics guidance.

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