Health
This pillar of WICID’s research will assess how inequalities affect health and its governance and how poor health exacerbates social inequalities. In order to do so, we will ask a series of critical questions: What symbolic role can the ‘right to health’ discourse play in how the health sector initiatives supporting universal health care in countries of the global South affect health inequalities? To what extent is there an emergent right to care? Do productivity objectives undermine the development of fairly distributed long term care provision in an ageing world? How do priorities of funding bodies contribute to invisibility of non-communicable diseases among impoverished communities? How does poverty and minimal access to healthcare reinforce inequalities especially for the urban poor? How do social attitudes towards gender, ethnicity, age affect health provision? How do mental health and minimal access to mental health facilities contribute towards a double burden for vulnerable and marginalized individuals?
Current Projects
Funder: Wellcome Trust
Investigator(s): Sharifah Sekalala (WICID Steering Committee)
Partners: Patricia Kingori (Oxford), Dora Vargham (Berlin), Ruth Odgen (Liverpool), Laura Salisbury (Exeter), Hadijah Wurie (Sierra Leone), Deborah Dinz (Brazil), Emily Chan (HongKong)
This interdisciplinary project with colleagues from Oxford, Liverpool, Exeter, Sierra Leone, Brazil and Myanmar explores the way in which global health deals with the ‘end’ of global health crises. Focusing on pandemics; health crises due to climate change and anti-microbial resistance, the project has been awarded a Wellcome Discovery Award worth £6.4 million pounds. Wellcome Discovery Awards fund established researchers to deliver significant shifts in understanding that could improve human life health and wellbeing.
Funder: Wellcome Trust
Investigator(s): Sharifah Sekalala (PI, WICID Steering Committee), Bitange Ndemo (University of Nairobi, Kenya), Pamela Andanda (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)
Funder: Wellcome Trust
With the dramatic increase in the collection of health data in recent years, health apps have been promoted as offering huge advances in the health of people in the Global South, but they also pose risks to privacy and ultimately to health outcomes. The project team will evaluate the data protection regimes and engage with key stakeholders in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda, to establish the extent to which they protect their citizens’ health data, especially in cross-border Health activities.
Previous Projects
NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Improving Health in Slums
Funder: NIHR
Partners: African Population and Health Research Centre, Independent University, Bangladesh, The Aga Khan University, University of Ibadan
The aim of the NIHR funded Global Health Research Unit on Improving Healthcare in Slums is to work collaboratively to improve health service delivery in slums, benefitting the population of low and middle income countries by reducing morbidity and mortality at the population level, and doing this at the smallest possible cost to both individuals receiving health services and wider society.
Integrating Legal Empowerment and Social Accountability for Sexual Reproductive health and HIV Services for Young People in Selected Slum Areas in Uganda
Funder: Warwick GCRF Catalyst Grant
Partners: Center for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD)
Rapid urbanization in Uganda drives economic development, but inadequate planning has also led to slum growth. Young women, in particular, face increased risks of HIV/AIDS infections, sexual assault, unsafe abortions and lack of access to basic services in slums. This project focuses on enabling young women in slums to achieve sexual and reproductive services rights through exploring how human rights can give them agency to proactively seek health services and redress when their rights are violated.
