Welcome to PHM's Political Economy for Health network (PE4H).

PE4H emerged (2025) from what was PHM's Trade and Health thematic group (from 2011). The brief of the PE4H network includes trade and health issues but takes a broader overview of the wider field of political economy as it relates to health and health care, nationally and globally.

The PE4H network works across PHM, including our programs, thematic groups, country circles, to make political economic perspectives and insights more widely accessible.

Imperialism is not just a slogan; it is a web of power governing the flow of value and investment choices. Ideas such as ‘overproduction’, ‘financialisation’, and ‘unequal exchange’ are critical to understanding imperialism, but they are not self-explanatory. Debates over the concept of ‘class’ under globalisation and the relationships between capitalism, patriarchy and coloniality also offer critical insights into the struggle for health.   A rich and shared understanding of political economy is fundamental to PHM’s work; a shared understanding of imperialism supports the convergence of social and political movements which is critical to our aspirations.

The scope of political economy goes far beyond narrow economism. Political economy draws on a wide range of ideas from critical social science as well as politics and economics. 

Objectives

The following objectives will guide the activities of the network in the current period:

• Generating, assembling and sharing research, analysis, and case studies relevant to the application of political economy to the implementation of our Mar del Plata Call to Action;
• Building closer links between PHM and more dedicated trade-focused networks in order to extend the reach of those networks as well as drawing on their expertise to enrich PHM’s work;
• Working with other units of PHM (programs, thematic groups, country and regional circles) to explore political economy insights into the priority issues and activities those units are working on;
• Working across languages and across different schools of thought regarding the application of political economy and critical social science to health; sharing perspectives and analyses.

Current activities

Join our email list. Write to [email protected] to subscribe to the PE4H email list.  

The PE4H glossary and blog has been established here: https://pe4health.phmovement.org/. PHM activists (from within and beyond the PE4H network) are invited to subscribe to the blog, join the bloggers and help develop the glossary ('key terms in PE and their relevance to health').

The Network is developing a program of PE4H webinars and IPHUs with a PE focus. Watch this space!

Language specific chapters within the Network are being developed with meetings planned within and across languages.   

A priority for the Network is to support the application of political economy concepts to PHM’s country level work through engaging with country circles and working together to generate country-specific resources which apply political economy and critical social science perspectives to local priority issues.