Below are extracts of a blog from the UK's Center for Global Development, and a comment from me (with thanks to Clare Watts):
Five Proposals for a New Era in UK Global Health Policy
by Peter Baker , Tom Drake , Anthony McDonnell , Lydia Regan , Katherine Klemperer and Javier Guzman
SEPTEMBER 27, 2023
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/five-proposals-new-era-uk-global-health-policy
In this blog, we lay out an initial set of five proposals that future governments may wish to consider when responding to these challenges.
1. Develop a new compact for financing health services that puts country-led prioritisation first
2. Think systems as much as science when it comes to harnessing the UK’s comparative advantage
3. Prioritise (and deprioritise) for greater aid impact
Restricting geographical footprint by committing to being a long-term trusted partner in fewer countries...
Refreshing the UK’s internal approach to value for money and ensuring consistency between departments that manage global health official development assistance...
Funding projects to support LMICs to achieve value for money by developing evidence-informed priority setting institutions...
4. Reform research publishing systems to truly support global health
There is a clear opportunity for the UK to work with emerging economies and other leading research producers to reform the publishing sector and ensure we have global research systems that are fit for purpose and can support global health progress.
5. Pursue reforms to global health architecture to take on global challenges while minimising trade-offs with country health systems
On AMR specifically, the UK has an excellent track record and a recent CGD working group has provided concrete actions that the UK can take to push this agenda forward...
The UK has lost its historic leadership in global health, now is the opportunity to regain it.
COMMENT (NPW): Among the other high-level proposals, it's interesting to see the specific proposal about publishing. In full, item 4 reads: 'The UK has a clear, comparative advantage to leverage science diplomacy for global development and should use it to reform research publishing systems. Global systems for research dissemination, dominated by a few major publishers, continue to restrict access to significant amounts of new research and many cannot afford to pay often high publishing charges. But in 2023, the research landscape is shifting. Emerging economies are producing ever more of the world’s research, and some are pioneering alternative models for research publishing. Without significant reform, research publishing—and wider research systems—risk fracturing into regional silos, thereby entrenching inequities and undermining our collective ability to tackle global challenges. The UK punches above its weight not only in research investment but in the prestige and perceived quality of its research institutions and their output. There is a clear opportunity for the UK to work with emerging economies and other leading research producers to reform the publishing sector and ensure we have global research systems that are fit for purpose and can support global health progress.'
I have invited the authors to join us and say more.
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org
