Mobilizing for Health Justice: Global Health Watch 7
Since its first edition in 2005, Global Health Watch (GHW) – the flagship publication of the People’s Health Movement (PHM) – has been critically reporting on the state of the world’s health. Published every three or four years, it comments on developments in global health while focusing on continuities with past popular struggles.
As with previous editions, GHW7 comes to life with contributions from over one hundred activists around the world, sharing experiences and analysis on issues affecting people’s health in the contexts they live in and efforts to progress towards greater health justice. This process was energized by the fifth People’s Health Assembly (PHA5), the global gathering of PHM, that took place in Argentina in April 2024 under the motto “Making ‘Health for All’ our struggle for ‘Buen Vivir”.
Political contributions from Latin America are manifest in the first GHW7 section, dedicated to “The global political and economic architecture”, where an up-to-date analysis of current health crises is followed by contributions that frame them in an eco-feminist perspective, showing how alternatives can be rooted in ancestral wisdoms and the practice of ‘Buen Vivir’. The second section addresses old and new challenges for public and global health systems through the critical lenses of gender justice and decoloniality. The third section, “Beyond Healthcare,” addresses key social and environmental determinants of health, while the “Watching” section critically apprises the state of global governance for health with a focus on several key institutions. The final section, “Resistance, struggles and alternatives,” highlights areas of transformative change by health activists in a global context of increasing repression. The book ends with a chapter on PHA5, highlighting how collective action is the most powerful medicine against ill health and health inequality at the human and planetary levels.
Global Health Watch 7 will include the following chapters
Introduction
From a Political Economy of Disease to a Political Economy for Wellbeing
Advancing an Eco-Feminist Political Economy for Health
Ancestral and Popular Wisdoms for Buen Vivir (Good Living)
Resisting Healthcare Privatization And Promoting Progressive Public Health Systems Reforms
AI, Digital Health, and Health Technologies
Gender Transformative Public Health Services
Abolition medicine as a tool for health justice
Decolonizing Global Health
War, Conflict and Displacement
People on the Move
Putting the Right to Health to Work
Tax Justice: A Pathway to Better Health
Commercial/Corporate Determination of Health
WHO’s Compromised Role in Global Health Leadership
Unpacking Our Pandemic Failures for Future Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response
Financing for Pandemic Recovery/Prevention and Climate Change Mitigation
Multilateralism and Civil Society Participation
Human Rights and the Struggle for Health
Taking Extractives to Court
Fear and Hope in Speaking Truth to Power
PHA5: Gatherings for activist energizing and re-optimization
People’s Health Movement and the GHW7 co-producing organizations: ALAMES, Equinet, Health Poverty Action, Medact, Medico International, Sama, Third World Network, Viva Salud; Editorial committee members: Ron Labonte (Canada; PHM, coeditor of GHW7), Chiara Bodini (Italy; PHM, coeditor of GHW7), Rene Loewenson (Zimbabwe; TARSC, Equinet), Dave McCoy (Malaysia; UN university international institute for global health), Dian Blandina (Indonesia; PHM global health governance group), Devaki Nambiar (India; George institute for global health and PHM India), Matheus Falcao (Brazil; Brazilian Centre for Health Studies – Cebes and PHM Brazil), Lauren Paremoer (South Africa; PHM global health governance group), Penelope Milsom (UK; Medact), Ravi Ram (PHM Kenya), Hani Serag (PHM, Co-chair of Global Steering Council).
The 7th edition of the GHW will be published with Daraja Press, a not-for-profit publisher, based in Québec, Canada, that seeks to reclaim the past, contest the present and invent the future. Daraja is the KiSwahili word for ‘bridge’. As its name suggests, Daraja Press seeks to build bridges, especially bridges of solidarity between and amongst movements, intellectuals and those engaged in struggles for a just world.