Partnerships in Global Health Research

Global Health research requires partnerships that are key in building, consolidating, and sharing knowledge and expertise. Effective partnerships allow the creation of sustainable health research systems that are critical in finding solutions to promote health and development.

However, many global health researchers fail to build respectful, collaborative , and mutually-beneficial partnerships. The expertise and contribution of local researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, community groups and individuals get overlooked and their knowledge and contributions are not appropriately sought or acknowledged.

Inspired by Kenyan author Binyavanga Wanaina’s “How to write about Africa”, Desmond Tubman wrote an editorial “How (not) to write about global health”. He satires how many assumptions are made about communities with global health researchers not putting in diligent effort to get the right buy-in from local stakeholders. He mentions the disregard for historical, cultural, sociological, political and anthropological contexts that are critical in understanding health problems and designing effective solutions and the disregard for sustainable solutions. There is also the disregard for giving authorship positions to local research partners and only mentioning them in the acknowledgements section.

I would like to challenge all my fellow global health researchers to reflect on how they actively perpetuate such unjust partnership models. In order to achieve health equity, partnerships that promote collective and cooperative research are fundamental in addressing global health challenges.