| Issue/Objective |
The call to decolonize global health has gained global momentum, yet risks becoming performative-dominated by buzzwords, elite capture, and conceptually thin scholarship detached from lived realities. Despite growing discourse on equity and epistemic justice, current practices often reproduce power asymmetries, linguistic domination, and extractive knowledge systems. This work critically examines these contradictions and asks: what does meaningful decolonization require beyond rhetoric? It aims to identify structural barriers and propose actionable pathways to shift from performative scholarship to substantive reform, aligned with the conference theme of reclaiming global health equity. |
| Methodology/Approach |
This study adopts a critical, transdisciplinary analytical approach, drawing on literature review, policy analysis, and reflective synthesis of global health practices, including conferences, funding mechanisms, and partnership models. It interrogates discourse patterns, authorship trends, institutional affiliations, and language dominance, while integrating perspectives from political economy, anthropology, and history of science. The analysis spans contemporary global health debates and reform initiatives, focusing on structural determinants of inequity. |
| Results |
Findings reveal that the decolonization discourse is often shaped by Global North institutions, including scholars of Global South origin working within them, reinforcing agenda-setting asymmetries. Key limitations include disciplinary silos, lack of robust theoretical frameworks, dominance of English-language scholarship, and widespread tokenistic inclusion practices. Global health conferences and initiatives frequently reproduce symbolic engagement without structural change. Critically, insufficient emphasis is placed on national accountability for financing health systems and research, limiting genuine agenda ownership. |
| Discussion/Conclusion |
Decolonizing global health requires moving beyond symbolic inclusion toward structural transformation. Key recommendations include reforming funding models to empower Southern institutions, embedding transdisciplinary approaches, promoting linguistic pluralism, and centring lived experience as valid expertise. Governments must invest in domestic research ecosystems to reclaim agenda-setting power. Aligning with the conference theme, this work underscores that reclaiming global health equity demands confronting power, politics, and responsibility-shifting from rhetoric to accountable, system-level change with scalable, context-responsive solutions. |
| Presenters and Affiliations |
Engelbert Bain Luchuo University of Oxford/Global Health Otherwise |
