Background With the exception of key 'proven successes' in global health, the current regime of global health governance can be understood as transnational and national actors pursuing their own interests under a rational actor model of international cooperation, which fails to provide...

The 21st century global health landscape requires effective global action in the face of globalization of trade, travel, information, human rights, ideas, and disease. The new global health era is more plural, comprising a number of key actors, and requiring more coordination of effort,...

With the Paul Wolfowitz era behind it and new appointee Robert Zoellick at the helm, it is time for the World Bank to better define its role in an increasingly crowded and complex global health architecture, says Jennifer Prah Ruger, health economist and former World Bank speechwriter

Background: As the human cost of the global economic crisis becomes apparent the ongoing discussions surrounding the post-2015 global development framework continue at a frenzied pace. Given the scale and scope of increased globalization moving forward in a post-Millennium Development Goals era,...

While the World Bank has integrated rights-based principles in the implementation of some health programs that it finances, it continues to deny a formal legal obligation for human rights. Employing thematic and discourse analyses, this study analyzes the ways in which rights-based approaches...

The appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to take over as World Bank chief prompted a barrage of criticism from activists concerned about his role in the Iraq war. But are these protests justified? Health economist and former World Bank speechwriter Jennifer Prah Ruger reviews the evidence

The global health community continues to look to the World Health Organization (WHO) to solve current global health governance (GHG) problems. But today's WHO is a compromised institution. On a theoretical level, WHO lacks a substantive justice oriented conception of international institutional...

"The Changing Role of the World Bank in Global Health" received numerous comments. In this response I restate the specific aims of the paper and offer comments regarding the Bank's structural adjustment programs and governance structure, its support of privatization and user fees, its...

Scholars of population and global health have grappled for decades with the complex relationship between health and its determinants. It is important to extend our analysis to broad structural factors, such as political institutions, however, to better understand global health inequalities. A...

Objective: To study cross-national inequalities in mortality of adults and of children aged 5 years using a novel approach, with clustering techniques to stratify countries into mortality groups (better-off, worse-off, mid-level) and to examine risk factors associated with inequality. Design,...