With the recent release of The Lancet Commission on global mental health and sustainable development, it is an opportune moment to reflect on the future of global mental health. This post begins by describing the Commission’s agenda and proceeds to offer reflections on communication and partnership in this field.

Over the past year, particularly since Dr Tedros’ election as the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, there has also been a large focus on the development of countries’ Primary Healthcare (PHC) systems. This post offers reflections on Astana Conference, on PHC and the missed opportunity with emergency preparedness.

When the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa struck, millions of concerned citizens from around the world wanted to read up on the disease. A staggering 17m readers a month consulted the Ebola page on Wikipedia[i]. If Wikipedia is becoming increasingly important for public health, should university students start editing it?

Last week, a few of us global health students and researchers at the University of Edinburgh got together to watch the live-streaming of the Women Leaders in Global Health (WLGH) 2018 Conference held at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. In this post, we present 6 tips on leadership, emerging from this conference.

Very few research centres study Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and Global Health Security (GHS) at the same time. I share my reflections on the Achieving Global Health Security workshop held in Edinburgh in May this year, jointly organised by the Global Health Governance Programme at the University of Edinburgh and the Centre for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University.

The rise of new economic powers since the post-1945 creation of the Bretton Woods institutions – including the establishment of the World Bank in 1944 and World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948 – has caused a paradigm shift in global health. There are growing calls to reform global governance structures to better reflect global realities. What implications do the changing nature of global governance arrangements have for global health diplomacy?

In this post, I reflect on the need to strengthen existing national health information systems in LMICs to collect data on two vital events i.e., birth and death, or in Mark Twain’s words, ‘the two most important days of our life’.

“What if governments had a proven, cost-effective way to save babies’ lives, reduce rates of malnutrition, support children’s health, increase educational attainment and grow productivity? They do: It’s called breastfeeding. And it is one of the best investments nations can make in the lives and futures of their youngest members – and in the long-term strength of their societies.”

The leading voices of global health policy are primarily drawn from a small, closely connected network of mostly Western, mostly male perspectives. In fact, in the last four issues of the Lancet (May 26- June 16, 2018) the authors of commentaries were predominantly male, white, trained and working in a European or American institution, and in a senior position.[1]  We see a similar pattern amongst experts quoted in media articles related to health security.[i],[ii] These experts have distinguished careers, and shape ongoing debates, dialogues and policies. While respecting these voices and experiences, we must also make room in ongoing debates for a more diverse community of scholars and practitioners…

The high-level meeting “Health Systems for Prosperity and Solidarity: leaving no one behind” has a theme – include, invest, innovate. “Include” means improving coverage, access and financial protection for everyone, “invest” refers to making the case for investing in health systems, and, lastly, “innovate” is about harnessing innovations and systems to meet people’s needs