key: cord-0681738-3gp51lwd
authors: Ataullahjan, Anushka; Kortenaar, Jean‐Luc; Qamar, Huma
title: Towards more equitable global health research in a COVID‐19 world
date: 2020-05-18
journal: Soc Anthropol
DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12856
sha: 4461679493ef4099e7ff0ba662527a0f96ca9273
doc_id: 681738
cord_uid: 3gp51lwd

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The manner in which we conduct global health research has drastically changed in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such a crisis challenges us to rethink and reshape how we set research priorities and conduct research globally. For decades, global health researchers have discussed making their research more participatory, engaging communities in the conception, priority-setting and design of research projects. In practice, however, research relies overwhelmingly on outdated modalities that prioritise researchers and research questions from high-income countries (HICs), at the expense of funding opportunities and the development of research capacity in many low-income countries (LICs). This has led to global health research priorities that are not shared with LICs. The COVID-19 pandemic, by necessitating the involuntary withdrawal of many researchers and staff from HICs operating in LICs, has made this all the more apparent. This has halted many HIC-led research studies abroad and interrupted research flow. To improve global health research and make it more participatory, there is a need to increase both local research capacity and funding opportunities for researchers in LICs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of empowering and engaging local investigators, collaborators and populations-at-risk, enabling them to guide the research agenda. The importance of locally owned and culturally informed containment strategies has been previously demonstrated, most recently by Ebola control efforts in West Africa (Manguvo and Mafuvadze 2015: 1-3) . Similarly, controlling the spread of COVID-19 relies on developing context-specific strategies. Building and promoting local research capacity in LICs, including the establishment of sustainable research infrastructure, is key to increasing our ability to have context-specific responses to crises such as COVID-19 and to understand and improve global health more generally. The current situation also highlights the need for more funding opportunities targeted to researchers in LICs. With international funding capacity poised to change, it is imperative to ensure that LICs can feasibly respond to this virus and any future such outbreaks. COVID-19 has demonstrated that we are all interconnected (Pai 2020) and that universal healthcare must be prioritised in LICs. Changing the research paradigm will only be possible if funders recognise the importance of and the need for locally led research.

As COVID-19 alters global health research worldwide and international travel is halted for the indefinite future, we must rely on local researchers and academics to understand context-specific patterns of COVID-19 transmission, and strategies to control and minimise these impacts. The potential to strengthen local capacity and ownership of research has never been greater. The use of strategies such as participatory research methods can ensure that our inquiries centre the voices of the most vulnerable. COVID-19 presents us with the opportunity to reimagine how our institutions address global disparities in the generation of knowledge. As global health researchers from HICs, we must ask ourselves, how can we better support the academics and researchers on the ground in the countries we work in?

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