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A book launch for Feminist Global Health Security by Dr Clare Wenham. At this book launch, speakers discussed the need for gender mainstreaming in global health security. Taking Zika as its primary case, but also touching on more recent experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, Feminist Global Health Security asks what the policy response to disease outbreaks tell us about the role of women in global health security.

This event discussed what vaccine (and heath technology) equity means for global management of the pandemic, and what challenges remain for health systems as vaccine rollout is operationalised.

Regional politics in the Middle East continues to have a cumulative impact on health, affecting health systems capacity and delivery of services. This webinar discusses the geopolitical barriers to strengthening health systems in the region, presenting a country case study comparison of Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq. Panellists also discuss how COVID-19 has exacerbated existing health insecurities and threats.

Priti Krishtel, health justice lawyer and co-founder of I-MAK, explains how in the midst of a global pandemic that is disproportionately costing Black and Brown lives, it is critical that we deepen our collective understanding about the medicines system and the structural racism that is embedded within it.

Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, discusses why bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive health and rights are fundamental to advancing human dignity and equality, prosperity and peace, and sustainable development that leaves no one behind. 

Speakers included: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization; Mariana Mazzucato, Chair of the WHO Council on the Economics of Health for All and Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL) and author of Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism; and Clare Wenham, Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.

This webinar reviewed how the COVID pandemic has affected global UHC transitions and present a country case study comparison of India and the United States of America (USA) to highlight the importance of genuine political commitment from the head of state to overcome political barriers and bring UHC to different settings. Panellists will discuss the importance of health agencies needing to improve their performance in engaging in issues relating to the political economy of UHC.

Part of the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Festival 2021, this webinar addresses the legacy of colonialism within international health systems and ask: what is the relationship between histories of imperialism and health, development and human rights? How can international institutions be reformed to overturn the global North’s dominance in health programming? 

An event to launch That High Design of Purest Gold: A Critical History of the Pharmaceutical Industry, 1880-2020 by Graham Dutfield. In this book launch symposium, jointly hosted by ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Global Health Initiative and Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, Professor Dutfield will be accompanied by four commentators: Dr Paul Fehlner (Axcella Health, formerly of Novartis), Dr Burcu Kilic (Public Citizen), Professor Ken Shadlen (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳), and Dr Siva Thambisetty (ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳). 

This seminar presents the findings of our research project, which analysed the intersection of Zika, regulation and medical abortion through a comparative case study of Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador. 

In this webinar, panellists discussed the value of these tools for assessing policies that impact health and wealth. Panellists examined how feasible policies and associated trade-offs depend on country circumstances: how should the policy response in India or Lebanon differ from the policy response in France or the UK? 

Women in the Global South are disproportionately negatively impacted by environmental threats and climate change; women who are already in marginalised positions are particularly vulnerable, especially those who are lower class, indigenous or who live in rural areas. For many women in these contexts environmental adversity is an embodied experience.

As Africa responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have shifted health agendas and funding to focus on outbreak preparedness and management. However, how has the outbreak impacted pre-existing health concerns? How have responses differed regionally? This webinar presented a comparative multi-country perspective of the effects of COVID across the African region.

The webinar examined a range of issues related to the development and use of vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including the range of incentives for innovation and national approaches to purchasing, price negotiations, and intellectual property and trade policies.

With 10 years to go, will the world meet Sustainable Development Goal 3: ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages?

Climate change measures and rhetoric, whether intentionally or not, can have a negative impact on the rights and freedoms of less powerful groups, notably women in the Global South. This panel discussion presents inter-disciplinary exchange, drawing on expertise from across the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ in climate change, demography, migration, gender, and reproductive rights.

This event brings together experts from academia, front line health pracitioners and NGOs to showcase research related to mental health in conflict or post conflict settings. 

What Does "Value for Money" in the Aid Sector Mean? 

What does value for money mean and why is it so hard to measure? This talk addresses contextual factors that give rise to challenges as well as sharing perspectives from applying theory in practice on global health programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. 

Engaging in the Political Economy of Universal Health Coverage

Mr Robert Yates reviews recent UHC transitions at different income levels and highlight the importance of genuine political commitment to overcome barriers and bring UHC to the people.

Dr Gustavo Matta presents a critical perspective of global health and the Zika outbreak. This seminar challenges the "global" perspective and suggests we need to develop an engagement and understanding of health, democracy and scientific knowledge, embedded within the global south discourse. 

Incentivising the Development of Novel Antibiotics: New Paradigm Needed? 

Dr Michael Sinha, from Harvard-MIT Centre for Regulatory Science, discusses antibiotc development. This seminar reviews and critiques existing US proposals in this area, while proposing alternative solutions to address an arguably dysfunctional antibiotic marketplace. 

To ensure that people live long and healthy lives it is important to know what kills different groups of people in different places. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) based on the Disability-Adjusted Life Year has been developed to do this. This lecture shows how this measure leads to various anomalies and biases, in particular it underestimates the health problems experienced by women and children.

This presentation reports expected impact on life expectancy, deaths averted, and inequality in life expectancy from scaling up recommended cost-effective and equitable actions for promotion, prevention and treatment of CMNNs, NCDs and injuries in low and lower-middle-income countries.

Growing resistance to antibiotics is one of the most significant current threats to global public health. This interdisciplinary panel sitting across International Development, Health Policy, Government and International Relations each addresses the challenge of growing resistance to antibiotics, providing a solution from their disciplinary viewpoint. 

Dr Heather Schofield looks at the effect of heavy exposure to factors such as noise, stress, and overcrowding which disrupt and limit sleep and the subsequent health consequences of sleep deprivation for the urban poor in India.

In this seminar Ted Schrecker, Professor of Global Health Policy at Newcastle University’s Institute of Health and Society, argues that the most important Grand Challenges in global health arise from increasing economic inequality and the public policies that reflect and reinforce it, and from the tension between legitimate aspirations of the majority of the world’s people and the biospheric implications of meeting them.  

Confronted with pandemics, bioterrorism, and emerging infectious diseases, governments are transforming their security policies to include proactive pharmaceutical development, acquisition, stockpiling, and mass distribution of new defences.

In this podcast, Stefan Elbe, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, presents his latest book Pandemics, Pills & Politics, in which he explores these questions through the story of the world's most prominent medical countermeasure – Tamiflu.

In 2017, three days after entering office, President Donald Trump not only reinstated the Global Gag Rule, he also expanded the order extensively. Trump halted US funding to family planning organisations providing abortion-related activities, but also extended this rule to any foreign nongovernmental organisation that receives funding from US Aid that does not certify that they do not use their own funding to provide abortions services.

This podcast with Professor Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Rutgers University, and Naila Kabeer, ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ looks at the effects this will have on maternal health and the broader implications.