The Institute for Global Health and Development
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Item The Global Fund and the re-configuration and re-emergence of 'civil society': Widening or closing the democratic deficit?(Taylor & Francis, 2012-01-13) Kapilashrami, Anuj; O'Brien, OonaghThe past decade has witnessed a tremendous growth in the scale and policy influence of civil society in global health governance. The AIDS 'industry' in particular opens up spaces for active mobilisation and participation of non-state actors, which further crystallise with an ever-increasing dominance of global health initiatives. While country evaluations of global initiatives call for a greater participation of 'civil society', the evidence base examining the organisation, nature and operation of 'civil society' and its claims to legitimacy is very thin. Drawing on the case of one of the most visible players in the global response to HIV epidemic, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, this article seeks to highlight the complex micropolitics of its interactions with civil society. It examines the nature of civil society actors involved in the Fund projects and the processes through which they gain credibility. We argue that the imposition of global structures and principles facilitates a reconfiguration of actors around newer forms of expertise and power centres. In this context, the notion of 'civil society' underplays differences and power dynamics between various institutions and conceals the agency of outsiders under the guise of autonomy of the state and people.Item Transforming governance or reinforcing hierarchies and competition: Examining the public and hidden transcripts of the Global Fund and HIV in India(2013-09) Kapilashrami, Anuj; McPake, BarbaraGlobal health initiatives (GHIs) have gained prominence as innovative and effective policy mechanisms to tackle global health priorities. More recent literature reveals governance-related challenges and their unintended health system effects. Much less attention is received by the relationship between these mechanisms, the ideas that underpin them and the country-level practices they generate. The Global Fund has leveraged significant funding and taken a lead in harmonizing disparate efforts to control HIV/AIDS. Its growing influence in recipient countries makes it a useful case to examine this relationship and evaluate the extent to which the dominant public discourse on Global Fund departs from the hidden resistances and conflicts in its operation. Drawing on insights from ethnographic fieldwork and 70 interviews with multiple stakeholders, this article aims to better understand and reveal the public and the hidden transcript of the Global Fund and its activities in India. We argue that while its public transcript abdicates its role in country-level operations, a critical ethnographic examination of the organization and governance of the Fund in India reveals a contrasting scenario. Its organizing principles prompt diverse actors with conflicting agendas to come together in response to the availability of funds. Multiple and discrete projects emerge, each leveraging control and resources and acting as conduits of power. We examine how management of HIV is punctuated with conflicts of power and interests in a competitive environment set off by the Fund protocol and discuss its system-wide effects. The findings also underscore the need for similar ethnographic research on the financing and policy-making architecture of GHIs.Item Meaningful change or more of the same? The Global Fund's new funding model and the politics of HIV scale-up(Taylor & Francis, 2014-02) Kapilashrami, Anuj; Hanefeld, J.As we enter the fourth decade of HIV and AIDS, sustainability of treatment and prevention programmes is a growing concern in an environment of shrinking resources. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) will be critical to maintaining current trajectories of scale-up and ultimately, ensuring access to HIV treatment and prevention for people in low/middle-income countries. The authors' prior research in India, Zambia and South Africa contributed evidence on the politics and impact of new institutional and funding arrangements, revealing a 'rhetoric-reality gap' in their impact on health systems, civil society participation, and achievement of population health. With its new funding strategy and disbursement model, the Fund proposes dramatic changes to its approach, emphasising value for money, greater fund predictability and flexibility and more proactive engagement in recipient countries, while foregrounding a human rights approach. This paper reviews the Fund's new strategy and examines its potential to respond to key criticisms concerning health systems impact, particularly the elite nature of this funding mechanism that generates competition between public and private sectors and marginalises local voices. The authors analyse strategy documents against their own research and published literature and reflect on whether the changes are likely to address challenges faced in bringing HIV programmes to scale and their likely effect on AIDS politics. 2014 2014 Taylor & Francis.Item Confronting 'scale-down': Assessing Namibia's human resource strategies in the context of decreased HIV/AIDS funding(Taylor & Francis, 2014-02) Cairney, L-I; Kapilashrami, AnujIn Namibia, support through the Global Fund and President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has facilitated an increase in access to HIV and AIDS services over the past 10 years. In collaboration with the Namibian government, these institutions have enabled the rapid scale-up of prevention, treatment and care services. Inadequate human resources capacity in the public sector was cited as a key challenge to initial scale-up; and a substantial portion of donor funding has gone towards the recruitment of new health workers. However, a recent scale-down of donor funding to the Namibian health sector has taken place, despite the country's high HIV and AIDS burden. With a specific focus on human resources, this paper examines the extent to which management processes that were adopted at scale-up have proven sustainable in the context of scale-down. Drawing on data from 43 semi-structured interviews, we argue that human resources planning and management decisions made at the onset of the country's relationship with the two institutions appear to be primarily driven by the demands of rapid scale-up and counter-productive to the sustainability of interventions. 2014 2014 Taylor & Francis.Item Social movements and public health advocacy in action: the UK people's health movement(OUP, 2015-06-26) Kapilashrami, Anuj; Smith, K. E.; Fustukian, Suzanne; Eltanani, M. K.; Laughlin, S.; Robertson, T.; Muir, J.; Gallova, E.; Scandrett, EurigThere are growing calls within public health for researchers and practitioners working to improve and protect the public's health to become more involved in politics and advocacy. Such a move takes practitioners and researchers beyond the traditional, evidence-based public health paradigm, raising potential dilemmas and risks for those who undertake such work. Drawing on the example of the People's Health Movement, this short paper argues that advocacy and social movements are an essential component of public health's efforts to achieve great health equity. It outlines how the Scottish branch of the People's Health Movement sought to overcome potential tensions between public health evidence and advocacy by developing a regional manifesto for health via transparent and democratic processes which combine empirical and experiential evidence. We suggest that this is an illustrative example of how potential tensions between public health research and advocacy can be overcome, through bottom-up movements of solidarity and action.Item Interrogating resilience in health systems development.(OUP, 2017-09-23) van de Pas, Remco; Ashour, Majdi; Kapilashrami, Anuj; Fustukian, SuzanneThe Fourth Global Symposium on Health Systems Research was themed around 'Resilient and responsive health systems for a changing world.' This commentary is the outcome of a panel discussion at the symposium in which the resilience discourse and its use in health systems development was critically interrogated. The 2014-15 Ebola outbreak in West-Africa added momentum for the wider adoption of resilient health systems as a crucial element to prepare for and effectively respond to crisis. The growing salience of resilience in development and health systems debates can be attributed in part to development actors and philanthropies such as the Rockefeller Foundation. Three concerns regarding the application of resilience to health systems development are discussed: (1) the resilience narrative overrules certain democratic procedures and priority setting in public health agendas by 'claiming' an exceptional policy space; (2) resilience compels accepting and maintaining the status quo and excludes alternative imaginations of just and equitable health systems including the socio-political struggles required to attain those; and (3) an empirical case study from Gaza makes the case that resilience and vulnerability are symbiotic with each other rather than providing a solution for developing a strong health system. In conclusion, if the normative aim of health policies is to build sustainable, universally accessible, health systems then resilience is not the answer. The current threats that health systems face demand us to imagine beyond and explore possibilities for global solidarity and justice in health. [Abstract copyright: The Author 2017; all rights reserved. Published by Oxford University Press in association with The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.]