Below are the citation and summary of a new paper in The Lancet Global Health.
CITATION: Dignity-based practice in global health research: a framework of expectations
Alice Bayingana et al. Lancet Global Health 2025; 13, Issue 9, e1627-e1635 September 2025
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(25)00242-6/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email
SUMMARY
Global health research is generally done by researchers, whether locally or internationally, based in locations other than the study locations and by people with more power than the marginalised groups they research. It therefore has a tendency towards unjust practices that sideline, distort, or erase the knowledge and interpretations of the marginalised groups while favouring those of the researchers. To develop a framework of expectations for practices that respect the dignity of marginalised people, we sampled and synthesised complaints about knowledge practices in global health published in 12 journals from 2017 to 2023. We identified four sets of expectations—transparency, non-extraction, democratisation, and transformation—across eight stages of research: funding decisions, framing of issues and posing of research questions, ethics approval, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, immediate or direct use of data and knowledge produced, dissemination of findings, and long-term or indirect use of data and knowledge produced. These expectations affirm the dignity of marginalised groups as knowers, sense-makers of knowledge, and seekers of transformational change.
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