Reclaiming the new era in global health: A proposal for an equity-centered paradigm
- 1Department of Medicine, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States of America
- 2Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice, World Bank, Washington, District of Columbia, United States of America
Abstract
Global health is facing unprecedented upheaval, with significant donor disruptions requiring a reconfiguration of the global health landscape. While recently proposed frameworks for the next phase of global health represent meaningful progress in grappling with this context, their central weakness is not technical but normative. In this Essay, we argue that if the new global health architecture is defined without meaningful interrogation of its central purpose, then the system will reproduce the very problems it aims to solve. On the other hand, explicitly centering health equity as the organizing principle of the new “global health” brings to the foreground the shared struggles and movements of marginalized communities worldwide. In doing so, it demands a more fundamental, global reckoning with the structural determinants – politics and power - that produce ill health across and within countries. From this logic flows substantive shifts in global health functions, predicated on a social-ecological model: from substitution to mutual aid; from technical assistance to knowledge sharing; from global public goods to multisectoral common goods for all; and from mechanisms that facilitate global coordination to ones that also critically address the distribution of power and resources.
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BibTeX
@article{yerramilli2026reclaiming,
title = {{Reclaiming the new era in global health: A proposal for an equity-centered paradigm}},
author = {Pooja Yerramilli and Mickey Chopra},
journal = {PLOS Global Public Health},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pgph.0007379},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0007379},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Reclaiming the new era in global health: A proposal for an equity-centered paradigm
AU - Pooja Yerramilli
AU - Mickey Chopra
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - PLOS Global Public Health
DO - 10.1371/journal.pgph.0007379
UR - https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgph.0007379
AB - Global health is facing unprecedented upheaval, with significant donor disruptions requiring a reconfiguration of the global health landscape. While recently proposed frameworks for the next phase of global health represent meaningful progress in grappling with this context, their central weakness is not technical but normative. In this Essay, we argue that if the new global health architecture is defined without meaningful interrogation of its central purpose, then the system will reproduce the very problems it aims to solve. On the other hand, explicitly centering health equity as the organizing principle of the new “global health” brings to the foreground the shared struggles and movements of marginalized communities worldwide. In doing so, it demands a more fundamental, global reckoning with the structural determinants – politics and power - that produce ill health across and within countries. From this logic flows substantive shifts in global health functions, predicated on a social-ecological model: from substitution to mutual aid; from technical assistance to knowledge sharing; from global public goods to multisectoral common goods for all; and from mechanisms that facilitate global coordination to ones that also critically address the distribution of power and resources.
SN - 2767-3375
ER -