ReviewPLOS global public health2023
Global health and the elite capture of decolonization: On reformism and the possibilities of alternate paths.
Review in PLOS global public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- To adjust, reform, or transform? Criteria for distinguishing efforts to change knowledge practices in global health.Global public health · 2026Article
- Escaping the metric-driven governance trap in global health: how DALYs and coverage indicators mislead policymakers in LMICs.International journal for equity in health · 2026Article
- Decolonising global health through implementation science: defining the path to equity and structural transformation.BMJ open · 2026Review
- Decolonising Neglected Tropical Diseases research in Africa: insights, challenges and promising practices.BMJ global health · 2026Review
- Building reparative futures demands a reckoning with the crisis form of global health.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Exploring understandings and approaches to decolonisation in the field of violence against women and girls: Towards conceptual clarity and actionable strategies for funding, programming and research.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Complicity or accountability? The limits of positionality statements.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Establishing criteria and distributing conference grants for participants from the Global South: experiences from the Canadian Conference on Global Health 2024.Health research policy and systems · 2025Article
- Student experiences and perspectives on decolonising global health education: a qualitative study across five Nordic countries.Global health action · 2025Article
- Neglected Harms: Health Workers Organizing for Accountability in Tigray.Health and human rights · 2025Article
- Decolonizing global health: a scoping review of its key components, proposed actions, and contributors.Global health research and policy · 2025Article
- Missed Nuances in Tuberculosis Research: Reflections from a Tibetan Scholar.International journal of social determinants of health and health services · 2025Article
- Decolonizing global health: a scoping review.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- The Neglected Tropical Disease Non-Governmental Organization Network: The role of a global health network in an evolving global health landscape.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- From decolonizing global health to neo-colonization by local elites: From the frying pan into the fire.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- The quest for equity in global health is underpinned by neocolonial discourses: A critical discourse analysis.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Disinvesting in the future leadership of global health has already begun: What can we do about it?PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Decolonizing mental health: Rethinking implementation science from the ground up.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2025Review
- Gandhi and the Decolonisation of Global Health.Annals of global health · 2025Article
- Soft money, hard power: Mapping the material contingencies of change in global health academic structures.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Global Health is experiencing a moment of reckoning over the field's legacy and current structuring in a world facing multiple, intersecting challenges to health. While "decolonization" has emerged as the dominant frame to imagine change in the field, what the concept refers to and entails has become increasingly unclear. Despite warnings, the concept is now being used by elite Global North institutions and organization to imagine their reformation. In this article, I attempt to provide clarity to the issue of conceptualizing change in Global Health. By first outlining a brief history of decolonial thought and then exploring the current state of the decolonizing global health literature, I show a profound disjuncture between popularized calls for decolonization in Global Health and other theorizations of the term. I then argue that the diluting of "decolonization" into a depoliticized vision of reforming the inherently colonial and capitalistic institutions and organizations of Global Health is an example of "elite capture"-the coopting and reconfiguration of radical, liberatory theories and concepts then used by elites for their own gain. Showing how this elite capture has facilitated harm within the field and beyond, I conclude by calling for resistance to elite capture in all its forms.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.