COVID-19, Decolonizing Global Health Top of Mind for Global Health Students Today

By Morghen Philippi
Today ' s global health students grapple with the legacy of colonialism in global health. Photo by Clement Tardiffe for IntraHealth International.July 22, 2020As COVID-19 started to rattle the world this year, countless strangers, acquaintances, and friends commented to me,“What an interesting time to study global health.”In May, I finished my first year of a Master of Public Health degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health. I agree—both the global pandemic and other seismic shifts, including amplified calls for decolonization and the global rise of the Black Lives Matter movement—make this a momentous time for global health. Dr. Ranjan Dattadefines decolonization as“a continuous process of anticolonial struggle that honors Indigenous approaches to knowing the world, recognizing Indigenous land, Indigenous peoples, and Indigenous sovereignty—including sovereignty over the decolonization process.”The COVID-19 pandemic offers a stark example of global health’s colonialist nature and history. Throughout the pandemic, the world has turned to public health experts for guidance. However, as noted by a letter to the Lancet, prevailing colonialist notions of expertise center voices in the Global North instead of the voices and actions of experts in the Global South, experts well-versed in managing epidemics.From redefining expertise to re-examinin...

Source: IntraHealth International - July 22, 2020 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: cbishopp Tags: COVID-19 IntraHealth-UNC Summer Fellows Source Type: news