Lenses
The lenses are the conceptual and analytic foundations of the Institute’s work that are in turn, rooted in principles and values informed by the UN Values Framework. The Institute has taken power as the analytical entry point to apply a set of five interconnected lenses that will facilitate collaboration across the Work Packages to interrogate the structural underpinnings of health inequalities in global health—Intersectionality, Feminism, Decoloniality, Contextualisation, and Powerful Actors.
Intersectionality:
UNU-IIGH will apply a multi-dimensional lens to health inequalities, focusing strongly on people experiencing discrimination on multiple grounds whether it be gender, race, ethnicity, Indigenous identity, caste, class, disability, sexual orientation, or other forms of social categorisation. The structural drivers and consequences of discrimination and exploitation will be incorporated into the Institute’s research, policy work, convenings and educational programmes and inform who UNU-IIGH works with, how and to what end.
The intersectionality lens is applied across each of the Work Packages. For example:
• Gender Equality and Intersectionality—Gender, class and race, along with other intersecting social determinants of health, are central to both equitable opportunities to lead healthy lives and the provision of high-quality health services for all.
• Power and Accountability—an intersectional approach to the systems of governance and the power structures will be taken to examine the intersectional and compound nature of gendered, racial and class discrimination and the inequities associated with many current global health crises.
• Digital Health Governance—Racial and ethnic minorities have historically faced disproportionate surveillance and privacy violations that can perpetuate or exacerbate existing racial disparities. Further, facial recognition systems perform worse on darker-skinned women due to biased training data. Biased AI algorithms may result in a greater percentage of errors in diagnosis or ineffective treatment for groups less represented in data and who are not involved in the design and piloting of algorithms, including racial and ethnic minorities.
• Climate Justice—Women and girls overall are disproportionately affected by the adverse effects of climate change, as compared with men and boys. This is the result of pre-existing gender inequalities and intersecting forms of discrimination, such as sex and gender orientation, disability, older women, women belonging to ethnic, racial and religious minorities, and others. The effects of climate change and fossil fuel-related pollution also run along lines of ethnicity, race, class and caste, perpetuating discrimination and inequalities.
Feminism:
UNU-IIGH will continue to apply a feminist lens as an analytical entry point to health inequalities. Applying a feminist lens to the intersectional and contextual causes of health inequalities will ensure the Institute’s research, policy work, convenings and educational programmes address power, privilege, and inequities; centre marginalised voices; and call for the fair distribution of power and responsibilities.
For example, the Gender Equality and Intersectionality Work Package will utilise a feminist lens to examine how the colonial project devalued and made women invisible, and overlooked gender inequalities. Application of this lens will intentionally situate intersecting gender inequalities at the heart of power analyses to recognise that bodies and sexuality are primarily sites of power, discrimination, control, and violence.
Decoloniality:
UNU-IIGH will develop, embed, and refine approaches to applying a decolonial lens to all its work, which will identify and describe power asymmetries and relationships of domination/subjugation that enable exploitation and the unjust, systematic appropriation of wealth and resources as colonial and explore their impact on health and health inequity, and seek to promote positive structural change and appropriate policy responses.
The Power and Accountability Work Package will apply the decoloniality lens to emphasise both the highly financialised and corporatised forms of contemporary colonialism and the legacies of the more territorialised and racialised forms of colonialism from earlier periods of history.
The Climate Justice Work Package will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that continue to define the health impacts of climate emergency. The ability of poorer countries to cope with the negative effects of climate change is diminished by the lasting consequences of colonialism, particularly its legacy of uneven distribution of resources among UN Member States. Climate change will not only perpetuate the effects of colonialism but, in effect, it is a new form of “atmospheric colonisation” by states that had established colonial empires, and the states based on the settler societies they left behind.
Contextualisation:
UNU-IIGH will embed contextualisation as a core component of research and advocacy efforts in service of evidence-informed decision-making to address the persistent imbalance/inverse relationship between global disease burden and global health knowledge production. The Institute will join forces with those best positioned to understand the specific sociocultural, economic, and geographical circumstances of different communities and countries, harnessing both the power of collective and bottom-up expertise and engaging with decision-makers in a position to effect systemic change.
The Digital Health Governance Work Package will utilise the contextualisation lens to make dedicated efforts to work with LMICs. The approach will facilitate the Institute to develop academic partnerships and establish networks with those working on DHG in LMICs, and focus on collaborative research, convenings and capacity-building work in Malaysia and the Western Pacific Region.
The climate crisis disproportionally affects people in the Global South and LMICs, especially in low-lying small island states and least-developed countries, due not only to their exposure to climate-related disasters but also to underlying political and socio-economic factors that amplify the impacts of those events, including the lasting consequences of colonialism. The Contextualisation lens will enable the Climate Justice Work Package to focus on influencing global policy and at the same time, build on the growing momentum both in Malaysia and South-East Asia more broadly to develop academic partnerships and establish networks with those working on these issues in LMICs.
Powerful Actors:
UNU-IIGH will deepen its expertise regarding the role, activities and impact of powerful actors across the global health ecosystem including, but not limited to, the growing influence of private actors such as financial institutions, private foundations, and multinational corporations.
The Power and Accountability Work Package identifies that shifts in power and changes to governance structures and models over the past few decades have contributed to major accountability deficits regarding powerful private actors. The Powerful Actors lens will be applied to specifically focus attention on and within particular groups of actors or institutions including the state, corporate and financial, academia and research institutions, international NGOs, private foundations and think tanks to work to correct power imbalances and mitigate accountability deficits.
The lenses are intertwined with the tactics, informing not only what the Institute works on, but also how it conducts its research, leverages its platform, and engages with others.
Tactics
The tactics outline how the Institute will work to achieve specific programmatic outcomes that together will contribute to the overarching aim to address health inequalities. Each Work Package will draw on a combination of the following five tactics developed during the 2019–2023 Strategic Plan:
Conduct Research and Analysis
UNU-IIGH collaborates with a broad spectrum of stakeholders, including researchers from government, civil society including marginalised voices and communities, and academia and draws on a cadre of Fellows, Visiting Scholars, and Experts to undertake research and generate analyses that contribute to evidence-informed policy dialogue, development, and review.
The Institute will focus on strengthening and expanding evidence by challenging narrow and exclusionary conceptualisations of evidence, developing and refining context-adaptable analytic tools to inform the design, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes, and informing and improving policy processes through workshops, symposia, and policy dialogues.
Foster Partnerships and Networks
UNU-IIGH partners across the UN system, with government ministries, civil society organisations, and the private sector.
The Institute will strengthen existing partnerships and develop new networks across the global health ecosystem and beyond. As a member of the UN family, UNU-IIGH brings an interdisciplinary and intersectoral approach to its global health work. Its neutral position, supported by its endowment, ensures academic independence.
Located in Malaysia, the Institute is particularly well-placed to bring low-and middle-income country voices and leadership to the fore.
Communicate Findings and Results
UNU-IIGH will utilise its position, privilege, and platform to ensure that co-created research contributes to evidence-informed policy and decision-making. The Institute will add value by providing contextually relevant research, enhancing inclusivity in knowledge production, and participating in key conversations across the global health landscape. Modes of engagement will include policy dialogues, workshops, and training activities.
The Institute will share impactful stories and lessons from our research and collaborations, strategically aligning messaging with communication objectives and stakeholder needs to contribute to the reduction of health inequity and gender inequality. The Institute will employ diverse communication methods and technologies, leveraging Institutional and partner channels for message amplification.
Advocate for Change
UNU-IIGH leverages its independent intellectual platform to advocate for approaches and outcomes in global health that may be novel, disrupt orthodoxies, and challenge global health actors to think and act in new ways. It does so by convening open and frank discussions, platforming marginalised voices, and, where appropriate, supporting implementation efforts.
The Institute’s advocacy will champion power sharing and redistribution. We will model the change we want to see, including utilising IIGH’s relative privilege and power to spotlight and amplify the promising practices of others, supporting local ownership and implementation, and allyship with aligned movements.
Strengthen Capacity
UNU-IIGH produces high-quality knowledge products and flagship training programmes that bolster the capacity for contextually relevant evidence-informed decision-making, especially in low- and middle-income countries. As part of our commitment to continual learning, we will collaborate with partners in processes of dynamic knowledge creation and exchange, learning from and building on their expertise.
We will continue to expand our network, activities and reach in support of our role as a South-South learning hub for global health, utilising our networks to connect various actors and facilitate the multi-directional transfer of knowledge and skills.
Through our internship and early-career fellowship programmes, UNU—IIGH will continue to provide opportunities for individuals with a wide range of experience and expertise to gain exposure to the work Headway of the Institute and the broader global health sector.