Background: Surveillance is the backbone for effective public health practice. Traditionally, surveillance system relies on collection of information regarding health-related events through healthcare facilities, disease notification from physician, syndromic networks, selected sentinel or by event-based data. However, there are several limitations in using conventional surveillance. Met...

the focus on public policy and health equity is discussed in reference to the current global health policy discussion on universal health coverage (uhc). this initiative has strong commitment from the leadership of the international organizations involved, but a lack of policy clarity outside of the health financing component may limit the initiative’s impact on health inequity. in order to add...

a number of individuals and organizations have considerable influence over the selection of global health priorities and strategies. for some that influence derives from control over financial resources. for others it comes from expertise and claims to moral authority—what can be termed, respectively, epistemic and normative power. in contrast to financial power, we commonly take for granted th...

this article agrees with recent arguments suggesting that normative and epistemic power is rife within global health policy and provides further examples of such. however, in doing so, it is argued that it is equally important to recognize that global health is, and always will be, deeply political and that some form of power is not only necessary for the system to advance, but also to try and ...

In 1992 Hurricane Andrew came ashore just south of Miami, Florida. In its wake it left just over sixteen billion dollars in insured damage. In the same year, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report declaring that “global warming is inevitable.”1 These two ominous events have fueled concern that global warming may lead to devastating hurricanes. However, som...

We are challenged to develop a public health approach that responds to the globalized world. The present global health crisis is not primarily one of disease, but of governance: its key characteristic is a weakening of public policy and interstate mechanisms as a consequence of global restructuring. The response needs to focus on the political determinants of health, in particular on mechanisms...