Event Recording: Decolonizing Global Health | Perspectives from Nurses and Midwives
During the first ever virtual UN General Assembly, Seed Global Health, in collaboration with the Nurses Lead | Midwives Lead campaign partners, hosted a webinar focused on decolonizing global health featuring perspectives from nurse and midwife leaders.
Our panelists outlined the numerous ways racism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and white saviorism negatively impact global health care, programs, policy, and funding. Ultimately, communities that these same efforts are designed to aid end up being silenced, exploited, and left to grapple with poor health outcomes.
Decolonization of global health can and will be done. We can start by:
- Recognizing local leadership, expertise, and knowledge
- Actively involving communities served in investment and funding decisions
- Creating programs and policies that are community-led, responsive, and people-centered
- Transforming health professional education and training
- Making reparations to communities for resources that have historically been taken away
- Ensuring communities are custodians of their own power
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Additional Resources
Articles:
- 10 Fixes for Global Health Consulting Malpractice
- Beyond Florence Nightingale: How African Nurses Have Decolonised the Profession
- How (Not) to Write About Global Health
- Who is the Hero of This Story? Communicating About Global Health in the 21st Century
Books:
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
- Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology by Deirdre Cooper Owens
- Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts
