Punching Above their Weight Network

4th People's Health Assembly
- Savar Bangladesh

Southgate Institute researchers and Punching Above their Weight Network members were among the 1400 civil society activists, researchers, government and health workers who attended the People’s Health Movement’s 4th People’s Health Assembly in Savar, Bangladesh, 15-19 November 2018. During the Assembly Dr Halfdan Mahler, former Director General of WHO and one of the founders of the 1978 Alma Ata Declaration on Primary Health Care, reaffirmed his vision that “Health is not a commodity, but a universal right”.

Professor Fran Baum, presented in a plenary session on the social and physical environments that destroy or promote health. A key argument that ran through Prof Baum’s presentation (and many others) was the need to put people before profits. This includes challenging the neoliberal capitalist policies that have dominated governance globally for over four decades, causing widening wealth and health inequities. In contrast to profit driven health services, the Assembly emphasised the need to revitalise primary health care to facilitate universal provision.

Prof Baum, Connie Musolino and other PAW network members David Sanders, Nikki Schaay, Mark Limmer, Kedar Baral and Simrin Kafle ran a workshop on why some countries do well or badly in terms of life expectancy relative to their GDP. Focusing on case studies on South Africa and Nepal the workshop highlighted the importance of looking beyond just economic development, to the social, political and environmental determinants as factors contributing to better health outcomes.  Drawing on participation from the audience, the workshop discussed civil society participation and community empowerment as a key determinant of health.

PAW meeting, Cape Town, South Africa

In February 2019 members of the international Punching Above Their Weight research network met in Cape Town, South Africa, funded by a UK Health Challenge grant. The meeting was attended by 16 participants from 8 nations. Fran Baum, Toby Freeman, Toni Delany-Crowe, and Connie Musolino represented Southgate, and Hailay Gesesew represented Public Health, Flinders University. The meeting focussed on advancing thinking and research about the social, political, economic and environmental factors that lead some countries to produce better or worse population life expectancy than would be predicted by their economic status.

Multiple jurisdictions were examined as case studies, including Spain, Ethiopia, Brazil, South Australia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and several Indian states. The discussions at the meeting extend previous research that focused primarily on health sector performance, rather than other social determinants that provide a foundation for population health and health equity.

The outcomes of the meeting will include two funding applications to extend the work of the Network, as well as several research papers based on presentations delivered during the meeting.

Baum, F. et al (2018) ‘Punching above their weight: a network to understand broader determinants of increasing life expectancy’. International Journal for Equity in Health, 17(117), Doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-018-0832-y https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-018-0832-y