Due to the current structure of academic global health, much research and literature is largely written for a global audience, often excluding local perspectives. A greater diversity of perspectives is needed in academic global health to increase knowledge sharing and relevance of research to local stakeholders. In November 2020, Global Health: Science and Practice and the USAID Momentum Project hosted a satellite session at the Health Systems Research (HSR) Conference called, Where is the local voice in academic global health? Reimagining how we produce and consume research to explore the consequences of this structure and reflect on how it could be restructured to strengthen representation of local experiences and voices.
The session is available on the HSR YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhVvreSfauI. Note, the audio starts about 1 minute in.
The session featured the following panel of experts in global health research.
Sẹ̀yẹ Abimbola Editor-in-Chief, BMJ Global Health; Senior Lecturer, University of Sydney, Australia
Sẹ̀yẹ Abimbola is a health systems researcher, a global health scholar, and a senior lecturer in global health at the University of Sydney, Australia. He studies community engagement in governance, decentralised governance, and the role of governance in the adoption and scale up of health system innovations. He is the current Prince Claus Chair (on Justice in Global Health Research) at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, where he is drawing insight from his ongoing research on health system governance to inform global health practice. He is the Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Global Health.
Purnima Menon Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute, India
Purnima Menon is Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, and is based in New Delhi, India. She is Theme Leader for South Asia Nutrition Programs in IFPRI’s Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division. In her work in India, she directs POSHAN (Partnerships and Opportunities to Strengthen and Harmonize Actions for Nutrition in India), an initiative to support more use of evidence for nutrition in India. She conducts implementation research on scaling up maternal and child nutrition interventions, including on evaluating large-scale behavior change communications programs in nutrition and health. Dr. Menon has research experience in India, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Haiti, Vietnam and Nepal and invests deeply in research translation in her engagements with policy communities.
Peter WaiswaAssociate Professor, Makerere University, School of Public Health, Uganda
Peter Waiswa is a Ugandan medical doctor trained in Public Health. He graduated with a joint PhD and later a Post-Doctoral fellowship; both as joint degrees/fellowships from Makerere University, Uganda and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Currently, Dr. Waiswa is an Associate Professor at Makerere University School of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, Uganda and also a visiting Researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. Prior to joining academia, he worked as a district medical officer with Ministry of Health for 8 years in Uganda. He is the Founder and Coordinator of the INDEPTH Network Maternal and Newborn Research Group in Accra, Ghana and the Makerere University Maternal and Newborn Centre of Excellence in Uganda. Dr. Waiswa is a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Advisory Board for Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health.
Stephen Hodgins Editor-in-Chief, Global Health: Science and Practice; Professor, University of Alberta School of Public Health, Canada
Steve Hodgins has served as Editor-in-Chief of Global Health: Science and Practice since 2017 and as an Associate Editor since 2014. But, he has been involved with the journal since its launch in 2013 as an author and reviewer. He is currently on the faculty of the School of Public Health, at the University of Alberta and prior to that was a Technical Expert for Save the Children. Throughout his career Dr. Hodgins has been preoccupied by the nexus of evidence and sound public health practice. His particular interests lie in the program implementation process, community health services, nutrition, and reproductive, maternal, neonatal and child health.
Jim RiccaDirector of Adaptive Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning, USAID's MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership
Jim Ricca is a family doctor and public health specialist who currently works at Jhpiego, a Johns Hopkins University affiliate that works on global health. He is Director of Adaptive Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning for the USAID-funded MOMENTUM Country and Global Leadership working in a number of countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He is also an editor for the journal Global Health: Science and Practice. Dr. Ricca has lived and worked in Honduras and Mozambique. He started his career practicing and teaching family medicine in Washington, D.C. as a member of the faculty of the Department of Family Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
