Why and for whom are we decolonising global health?
This post was written by Ong’era F Mogaka, Jenell Stewart and Elizabeth Bukusi and published in Volume 9, Issue 10 of The Lancet: Global Health.
The growing calls to decolonise global health are welcome but also worrisome. Suggestions for decolonisation vary greatly, with a common view to shift power to local ownership but without clear plans on how to make this suggestion a reality. Many researchers are calling for global health research to be led by local leaders in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), with expatriate academics providing peripheral support rather than the other way around.1 Others call for radical transformation as the only reasonable response to addressing the complexity of reforming global health research when many leaders in global health have built their careers in institutions that advance and sustain white supremacy.2, 3