Health has gained importance on the global agenda. It has become recognized in forums where it was once not addressed. In this article three issues are considered: global health policy actors, global health priorities and the means of addressing the identified health priorities. I argue that the arenas for global health policy-making have shifted from the public spheres towards arenas that incl...

Brugha and Bruen (2014) raise a number of compelling issues related to the interaction between politics and policy in the global health context. The first question that their views invite is whether this is, at heart, best characterized as a benign or malign influence. Many commentators have suggested that this overlap should be discouraged (see, for example, Marseille et al 2002; Thomas & Webe...

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...

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) marks a unique point in the history of global health governance. This convention produced the first legally binding treaty under the auspices of the World Health Organization. Another first was the extent to which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) participated in the negotiation process. This article explores the relationship between one gr...

In September 2015, nearly 200 nations adopted the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a transformative, universal framework to address three interwoven dimensions of our global existence—people, planet, and prosperity. They are predicated on the notion that sustainability is not just an aspiration but a necessity. However, by substantially expanding on the scope and targets of their pred...

February 2006 | Volume 3 | Issue 2 | e43 The term “globalization” was popularized by Marshall McLuhan in War and Peace in the Global Village . In the book, McLuhan described how the global media shaped current events surrounding the Vietnam War [1] and also predicted how modern information and communication technologies would accelerate world progress through trade and knowledge development. Gl...

While the right to health is increasingly referenced in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) discussions, its contribution to global health and development remains subject to considerable debate. This hypothesis explores the potential influence of the right to health on the formulation of health goals in 4 major SDG reports. We analyse these reports through a social constructivist lens which view...

This review examines the role of donor human milk banking in international human rights documents and global health policies. For countries looking to improve child health, promotion, protection and support of donor human milk banks has an important role to play for the most vulnerable of infants and children. This review is based on qualitative triangulation research conducted for a doctoral d...

International collaborative health research is justifiably expected to help reduce global health inequities. Investment in health policy and systems research in developing countries is essential to this process but, currently, funding for international research is mainly channelled towards the development of new medical interventions. This imbalance is largely due to research legislation and po...

This paper explores the nature and type of policy transfer promoted by global health partnerships to facilitate access to medication in Cameroon and the associated implementation challenges. Using concepts from policy transfer, multi-level governance and the politics of scale, the paper conceptualizes the social spaces (global-national-local linkages) through which global health policies are ne...