...the voice of funders with clear commitments on how they intend, and should ensure, that there is equity in global health research remains disturbingly absent. If any concrete progress is envisaged in ensuring equity in global health research, then the funders must walk the talk...
...funders should come up with clear guidelines and indicators to ensure that equity is engrained throughout the research cycle with the research they fund...
By Luchuo Engelbert Bain, MD, PhD1,2,3
- International Development Research Centre, IDRC, Ottawa, Canada.
- Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
- Pan African Medical Journal, PAMJ.
Email: lengelbert-bain@idrc.ca lebaiins@gmail.com
EQUITY IN GLOBAL HEALTH RESEARCH: HIGH TIME FOR FUNDING AGENCIES TO WALK THE TALK
Healthy partnerships in the global health research agenda stand to greatly accelerate the decolonization of decolonizing global health. Indeed, the much-awaited Cape Town Statement of the just ended 7th World Conference on Research Integrity (29 May-1 June 2022, Cape Town, South Africa) will put extra momentum in ending “helicopter research”. Some major players in the global health publication space (The Lancet, Nature, The BMJ, Anesthesia) have taken a clear commitment to ensure equity when it comes to authorship. As we speak, the voice of funders with clear commitments on how they intend, and should ensure, that there is equity in global health research remains disturbingly absent. If any concrete progress is envisaged in ensuring equity in global health research, then the funders must walk the talk.
As a starting point in this reflection, funders should come up with clear guidelines and indicators to ensure that equity is engrained throughout the research cycle with the research they fund. Clear equity indicators in the terms of engagement, that should/must be respected by grantees, as well as reporting framework are highly needed. Conscious inclusion of capacity building plans of grantees is required. Only through an extra and conscious effort in building the capacities of researchers can ending helicopter research be envisaged. Empirical research to identify the needs of actors, as well as co- defined meaning of equity for stakeholders to have a common meaning of the concept at the outset.
Coming up with a clear transparency mechanism (e.g through guidance documents on the websites) is highly needed to ensure that funder is actually walking the talk in ensuring equity in global health research.