Decolonising global health by decolonising academic publishing

Khan, Shahzad Amjad

doi:10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007811

Cited by 20 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Wide-ranging explorations of representation, discrimination, harassment, silencing, and power differentials are appearing in leading MER journals. Many of these are written as commentaries and perspectives pieces, providing thoughtful analyses of personal experiences and theoretical explorations of ways that dominant approaches (generally white and Euro-American-centric) constrain and limit the field [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. There are also an increasing-albeit still small-number of empirical studies examining various aspects of representation within medical education, with recent attention given to gender, sociocultural, and racial equity within academic medicine's leadership, student body, and curricula [17][18][19][20][21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faster, higher, stronger – together? A bibliometric analysis of author distribution in top medical education journals

Whitehead

Cartmill

Rodrigues

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Background Within medical education research, issues of equity, absence, and marginalization of diverse perspectives are becoming a growing area of scholarly focus. One area of absence that has been under-explored is that of published voices from low- and middle-income countries and non-English speaking scholars. Bibliometric analyses are one way to identify absences. We undertook a bibliometric analysis of five top medical education journals to determine which countries were represented in prestigious first and last authorship positions. Methods Web of Science was searched for all articles and reviews that were published between 2012 and 2018 within Academic Medicine, Medical Education, Advances in Health Sciences Education, Medical Teacher, and BMC Medical Education. Country of origin was identified for the first and last author of each publication, and the number of publications originating from each country were counted. Results Our analysis revealed a dominance of first and last authors from five countries: USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Australia. Authors from these five countries had first or last authored 74% of publications. Of the 195 countries in the world, 53% were not represented by a single publication. Journals varied in their inclusion of authors from outside of these five dominant countries, with BMC Medical Education including more geographic diversity than other journals. There was a slight increase in the percentage of publications from outside of these five countries, from 22% in 2012 to 29% in 2018. Conclusions The dominance of wealthy nations within spaces that claim to be international is a finding that requires attention. As a bibliometric analysis, we were unable to unearth the reasons behind this dominance. However, we draw upon analogies from modern Olympic sport and our own collaborative research process to show how academic publishing continues to be a colonized space that advantages those from wealthy and English-speaking countries.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faster, higher, stronger – together? A bibliometric analysis of author distribution in top medical education journals

Whitehead

Cartmill

Rodrigues

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…Medical dominance, exerted via structural and productive power, means that global health institutions rely on narrow conceptions of knowledge to guide their responses to health issues, often excluding or only superficially including lived experience, social policy expertise, and knowledge derived from non-positivist paradigms such as Indigenous methodologies, participatory action research, and even much of mainstream social science. 6 These types of knowledge remain largely absent from the deliberative and decision-making processes of most major global health institutions – as does the practical wisdom (‘phronesis’) of how to implement interventions and policies. 7 Dismissal of non-medical knowledge that could inform health strategies was evident in Lassa and colleagues’ study, where respondents said members of community-based organizations and patient groups did not have the ‘sophistication [of] MBBS medical doctors.’ As a guide to decision-making, the obsession with quantifying the impact of targeted, disease-specific, medical solutions – sometimes called the ‘Gates approach’ – is much criticized.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical Dominance in Global Health Institutions as an Obstacle to Equity and Effectiveness Comment on "Power Dynamics Among Health Professionals in Nigeria: A Case Study of the Global Fund Policy Process"

Dalglish

Sanuade

Topp

2023

Int J Health Policy Manag

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Medical professionals exercised structural and productive power in the Global Fund’s Country Coordinating Mechanism in Nigeria, directly impacting the selection of approaches to HIV/AIDS care, as described in a case study by Lassa and colleagues. This research contributes to a robust scholarship on how biomedical power inhibits a holistic understanding of health and prevents the adoption of solutions that are socially grounded, multi-disciplinary, and co-created with communities. We highlight Lassa and colleagues’ findings demonstrating the ‘long arm’ of global health institutions in country-level health policy choices, and reflect on how medical dominance within global institutions serves as a tool of control in ways that pervert incentives and undermine equity and effectiveness. We call for increased research and advocacy to surface these conduits of power and begin to loosen their hold in the global health policy agenda.

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“…Second, there is a need for studies of the effectiveness of interventions implemented in prison settings in LMICs. The paucity of data identified from LMICs may itself be due to global structures that de-prioritize LMICs both in the resources made available in these settings, including those that support high-quality conduct of, and reporting on, intervention studies, and in the dissemination of research findings (Baingana et al, 2015; Baranyi et al, 2019; Dimitris et al, 2021; Khan, 2022; Turner et al, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of Interventions to Address Substance Use Disorders and Other Mental Health Disorders in Prison Settings With a Focus on Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Jordan¹,

Kashino²,

Suhartono³

et al. 2023

Criminal Justice and Behavior

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Interventions to treat substance use disorders (SUDs) and other mental health disorders (MHDs) in prison settings vary in both availability and effectiveness across contexts. Furthermore, incomplete characterization of intervention efficacy and/or effectiveness impacts the ability to know whether an intervention with demonstrated effectiveness in one setting will be effective in another setting. We systematically reviewed the literature for studies of interventions for SUDs and other MHDs conducted in prison settings, and synthesized the identified interventions and identified evidence gaps. Search strategies yielded 9,599 articles published between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2020. A total of 82 articles were identified as eligible with interventions presented for SUDs ( n = 52), for MHDs ( n = 23), and for SUDs/MHDs ( n = 7). Findings point to a narrow range of interventions of demonstrated effectiveness and to important gaps in the evidence-base for which high-quality research, particularly in low- and middle-income settings, is needed.

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Decolonising global health by decolonising academic publishing

Cited by 20 publications

References 40 publications

Faster, higher, stronger – together? A bibliometric analysis of author distribution in top medical education journals

Faster, higher, stronger – together? A bibliometric analysis of author distribution in top medical education journals

Medical Dominance in Global Health Institutions as an Obstacle to Equity and Effectiveness Comment on "Power Dynamics Among Health Professionals in Nigeria: A Case Study of the Global Fund Policy Process"

A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis of Interventions to Address Substance Use Disorders and Other Mental Health Disorders in Prison Settings With a Focus on Low- and Middle-Income Countries

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