{"id":6759,"date":"2019-11-25T08:13:10","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T05:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6759"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:42","slug":"lack-of-equity-and-diversity-still-plague-global-health-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/25\/lack-of-equity-and-diversity-still-plague-global-health-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Lack Of Equity And Diversity Still Plague Global Health Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Madhukar Pai<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The field of global\nhealth has evolved from colonial and military medicine, tropical medicine and\ninternational health. While it is evolving for the better, research shows that\nglobal health is&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/global-health-still-mimics-colonial-ways-heres-how-to-break-the-pattern-121951\">still\nstruggling to shake off its colonial past<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Equity is at the\nheart of global health. And yet, research studies show that global health\nresearchers, funders and journals are not walking the talk on equity, diversity\nand inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Global health\nresearch is driven by funders and agencies that are dominated by&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosmedicine\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pmed.1001312\">experts\nfrom the Global North<\/a>. A&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/globalhealth5050.org\/\">survey\nof 198 global health organisations<\/a>&nbsp;showed that nearly 90% were\nheadquartered in North America or Western Europe, with boards dominated by men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is growing\nawareness about&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thelancet.com\/journals\/langlo\/article\/PIIS2214-109X(18)30239-0\/fulltext\">\u201csafari\u201d\nor \u201cparachute\u201d research<\/a>&nbsp;and its negative consequences. The recent\nstory of Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2019\/11\/04\/774863495\/this-congolese-doctor-discovered-ebola-but-never-got-credit-for-it-until-now\">Congolese\ndoctor who discovered Ebola but did not get much credit<\/a>&nbsp;until today,\nis a striking but perhaps extreme example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even when research\nis done collaboratively, there are issues with authorship and inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rose Mbaye, Yap Boum\nand colleagues from the University of Rochester, Medecins Sans Frontiers and\nother institutions did an analysis of research studies conducted in Africa on\nHIV, malaria, TB, salmonellosis, Ebola and Buruli ulcer. They found that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/gh.bmj.com\/content\/4\/5\/e001855\">African authors are highly\nunder-represented<\/a>&nbsp;as first and last authors. These authorship\npositions often get the most visibility and credit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bethany Hedt-Gauthier, Jimmy Volmink and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Stellenbosch University and other institutions did a similar analysis. They\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gh.bmj.com\/content\/4\/5\/e001853\">found<\/a>\u00a0that over 50% of all co-authors and first authors on papers about health in Africa were from the country of the paper\u2019s focus. But if any co-authors were from the United States, Canada or Europe, then the overall representation of African authors dropped, particularly in the first and last author positions. This was most frequent when collaborators were from an American university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trends from specific global health journals such as The\u00a0Lancet Global Health and specific areas of research such as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/full\/10.1111\/tmi.12966\">paediatrics<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/globalizationandhealth.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12992-016-0172-x\">maternal health<\/a>\u00a0confirm these findings of under-representation of authors from low- and middle-income countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/lack-of-equity-and-diversity-still-plague-global-health-research-127239\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Madhukar Pai The field of global health has evolved from colonial and military medicine, tropical medicine and international health. While it is evolving for the better, research shows that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}