Welcome to the Global Health Justice Website!
We aim to advance the struggle for global health justice by providing a platform and resources that explore fundamental drivers of health that are often absent in the conventional global health discourse. We recognize that global and national structures of domination, exploitation, and oppression play a crucial role in perpetuating poverty, disenfranchisement, and inequality – all of which have a profound impact on global health. Our goal is to expand our conversations to identify and better understand how injustice is perpetrated – and to work to transform power dynamics toward a fairer world.
By shedding light on these issues, we hope to promote a deeper understanding of the social and political determinants of health. To this end, we prioritize the perspectives and voices of those from the Global South, whose lived experiences and insights are essential for a truly comprehensive understanding of health justice. We welcome contributions to the website, including relevant articles, videos, and artistic expression (eg, songs, poetry) to further explore these issues. We encourage our UW Global Health alumni to contribute to increase our collective awareness of the situation around the world. Our website is a collaborative effort of faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the University of Washington Department of Global Health.
Global Theft
Deliberate trade mis-invoicing robs Africa of huge sums
March 19, 2026
Philip Nyakundi and colleagues at Global Financial Integrity released a report on 28 January 2026 that quantifies the enormous financial loss to African countries due to rich country corporations’ mis-invoicing the value of commodity transactions. The loss of resources and capital flight comes at great cost to public welfare and overall development. The total losses by mis-invoicing alone matches the combined total annual inflows of Official Development Assistance (ODA) and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to Africa, meaning Africa loses as…
Reimagining Aid
Paying More, Owning Less: Rethinking Authority and Dependency in African Health Financing
July 16, 2026
The America First Global Health Strategy presents bilateral, time-bound financing compacts as a pathway toward greater country ownership. Under these arrangements, African governments co-finance health programs with the United States and gradually assume financial responsibility as American funding declines. Yet this episode asks a fundamental question: can countries genuinely own health systems when they bear responsibility for sustaining them but lack the corresponding authority over technology, data, procurement, and the political conditions attached to funding? Nelson Aghogho Evaborhene, a PhD…
Decolonization
Paying More, Owning Less: Rethinking Authority and Dependency in African Health Financing
July 16, 2026
The America First Global Health Strategy presents bilateral, time-bound financing compacts as a pathway toward greater country ownership. Under these arrangements, African governments co-finance health programs with the United States and gradually assume financial responsibility as American funding declines. Yet this episode asks a fundamental question: can countries genuinely own health systems when they bear responsibility for sustaining them but lack the corresponding authority over technology, data, procurement, and the political conditions attached to funding? Nelson Aghogho Evaborhene, a PhD…
War/ Militarism
Exclusion of genocide-related deaths from surveillance frameworks grossly underestimates child mortality
March 7, 2026
Reuben Granich, Somya Gupta, and Victoria Rose argue that the systematic exclusion of politically sensitive causes of death, such as genocide, enormously underestimates the numbers and causes of childhood deaths worldwide. Genocide-related child deaths in Gaza represent one of the leading global causes of childhood mortality. They recommend recognizing and coding genocide as a preventable cause of death for accountability, accurate health metrics, and urgent humanitarian response. The authors state that although official reports cite 60,199 deaths in Gaza as…
Structural Violence
Rights Promised vs. Rights in Practice
April 11, 2026
This article from Women in Global Health examines the persistent gap between legal rights and lived realities for women, highlighting how shortcomings in implementation, access, and accountability continue to shape health outcomes. Drawing on global examples, it points to structural and institutional barriers, such as stigma, weak enforcement, and inequitable service delivery, that prevent rights from being realized in practice. It underscores that advancing women’s health requires moving beyond formal policy commitments toward systems that can meaningfully deliver on those…
Medical Apartheid
Cuba’s Medical Crisis Shows the True Cost of U.S. Sanctions
April 9, 2026
What is often framed as a “humane” form of political pressure is, in reality, anything but humane. The crisis described in a recent New York Times article makes clear that blockades carry an enormous human cost, and that cost is paid first by those who are already most vulnerable: disabled people, the chronically ill, pregnant women, children, and the elderly. When oil blockades disrupt electricity, transportation, hospital services, and the delivery of essential medicines, they are not abstract policy tools;…
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