Transforming Universities for
Equity and Impact in Global Health

Background: Collaborative, interdisciplinary research is an important approach for better understanding issues leading to poorer health outcomes in low resource countries and communities and for identifying strategies to address these issues. In global health research, power imbalances between researchers and between research institutions, caused by colonialism, historical injustices, geo-political interests, economic oppression, and persistent structural racism, have resulted in poor research practices. These include a failure of researchers from high resource settings to meaningfully and equitably engage collaborators with fewer resources and less power, to support processes that fairly reward those collaborators for their contributions, and to support those collaborators’ institutional infrastructure for future research.

Objectives: Academic institutions and their faculty have a responsibility to address these power imbalances in global health research. In this satellite session, we will:

1. Build consensus on university-level reforms needed to improve collaborations and impact. This includes presenting the draft CUGH policy statement on recommended changes.
2. Develop strategies to advocate for institutional-level or disciplinary-level changes.

Format: The satellite session will be fully virtual and will consist of lightning talks and short presentations, panels, and open group discussions. The session is designed to be interactive for all participants.

Who should attend? Anyone engaged in research, anywhere in the world, is invited; this session targets academic researchers participating in community-engaged research, academic administrators and university leaders, and research partners.

One goal of this session is to reflect on and advise the Position Statement under consideration at CUGH. A draft position statement is available here.

Below is a compiled list of the readings recommended by featured participants.

Abimbola S. (2019) The foreign gaze: authorship in academic global health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830280/

Abimbola S. (2021) The uses of knowledge in global health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8030475/

Airhihenbuwa C. and Juliet I. Iwelunmor. A Call for Leadership in Tackling Systemic and Structural Racism in the Academy

Airhihenbuwa CO et al. (2019) A call for leadership in tackling systemic and structural racism in the academy. In: Racism: Science and Tools for the Public Health Professional.

Baobeid A et al. (2022) Gender equity in health research publishing in Africa. https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/7/e008821.full?ijkey=OxlFzsRYKWBZpZ6&keytype=ref

Batson A et al. (2021) More women must lead in global health: A focus on strategies to empower women leaders and advance gender equality. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8284502/

Chu K et al. (2014) Building research capacity in Africa: equity and global health collaborations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3949667/

Dimitris MC et al. (2021) How global is global health research? A large-scale analysis of trends in authorship. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33500263/

Finkel, M. L., Temmermann, M., Suleman, F., Barry, M., Salm, M., Binagwaho, A., & Kilmarx, P. H. (2022). What Do Global Health Practitioners Think about Decolonizing Global Health?. Annals of Global Health, 88(1), 61. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/aogh.3714

Hedt-Gauthier B et al. (2018) Academic promotion policies and equity in global health collaborations. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30496066/

Hedt-Gauthier B et al. (2019) Growing research in global surgery with an eye towards equity. https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article/106/2/e151/6120769

Hedt-Gauthier B et al. (2019) Stuck in the middle: a systematic review of authorship in collaborative health research in Africa, 2014-2016. https://gh.bmj.com/content/4/5/e001853

Jumbam DT. (2020) How (not) to write about global health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7371021/

Karan A. (2019) Opinion: It’s time to end the colonial mindset in global health. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/12/30/784392315/opinion-its-time-to-end-the-colonial-mindset-in-global-health?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr

Kumar A. (2021) Five years from now, who will be setting the global health agenda? https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/12/e008045.info

Kumar M. (2019). Championing Equity, Empowerment, and Transformational Leadership in (Mental Health) Research Partnerships: Aligning Collaborative Work With the Global Development Agenda. Frontiers in psychiatry, 10, 99. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00099

Kumar, M., Atwoli, L., Burgess, R. A., Gaddour, N., Huang, K. Y., Kola, L., Mendenhall, E., Mugo, C., Mutamba, B. B., Nakasujja, N., Njuguna, I., Obasi, A., Petersen, I., & Shidhaye, R. (2022). What should equity in global health research look like?. Lancet (London, England), 400(10347), 145–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(22)00888-1

McCutchan S. (2022) Research data governance for global health: A landscape analysis. https://globalhealth.duke.edu/sites/default/files/ghdatagov_landscapeanalysisv1.1.pdf

Morton B et al. (2022) Consensus statement on measures to promote equitable authorship in the publication of research from international partnerships. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9293237/

Moyer, C. A., Abedini, N. C., Youngblood, J., Talib, Z., Jayaraman, T., Manzoor, M., Larson, H. J., Garcia, P. J., Binagwaho, A., Burke, K. S., & Barry, M. (2018). Advancing Women Leaders in Global Health: Getting to Solutions. Annals of global health, 84(4), 743–752. https://doi.org/10.9204/aogh.2384

Patel, V., et al. (2018). The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development. Lancet Commisions, 392 (10157), 1553-1598. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014067361831612X 

Relihan C. (2020) Ten ways to promote culture change on a university campus. https://medium.com/the-faculty/ten-ways-to-promote-culture-change-on-a-university-campus-f42cd334a4e

Sam-Agudu, N. A., Paintsil, E., Aliyu, M. H., Kwara, A., Ogunsola, F., Afrane, Y. A., … Ezeanolue, E. E. (2017). Building Sustainable Local Capacity for Global Health Research in West Africa. Annals of Global Health, 82(6), 1010–1025. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.aogh.2016.10.011

Shuchman M et al. (2014) Partnering with local scientists should be mandatory. https://www.nature.com/articles/nm0114-12#citeas

Talib, Z., Burke, K. S., & Barry, M. (2017). Women leaders in global health. The Lancet. Global health, 5(6), e565–e566. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(17)30182-1