Increasing compliance with international pandemic law: international relations and new global health agreements.

Across multiple pandemics, global health governance institutions have struggled to secure the compliance of states with international legal and political commitments, ranging from data sharing to observing WHO guidance to sharing vaccines. In response, governments are negotiating a new pandemic treaty and revising the International Health Regulations. Achieving compliance remains challenging, but international relations and international law research in areas outside of health offers insights. This Health Policy analyses international relations research on the reasons why states comply with international law, even in the absence of sanctions. Drawing on human rights, trade, finance, tobacco, and environmental law, we categorise compliance mechanisms as police patrol, fire alarm, or community organiser models. We show that, to date, current and proposed global health law incorporates only a few of the mechanisms that have shown to be effective in other areas. We offer six specific, politically feasible mechanisms for new international agreements that, together, could create compliance pressures to shift state behaviour.

Intellectual Property and the Politics of Public Good during COVID-19: Framing Law, Institutions, and Ideas during TRIPS Waiver Negotiations at the WTO.

CONTEXT: To facilitate the manufacturing of COVID-19 medical products, in October 2020 India and South Africa proposed a waiver of certain intellectual property (IP) provisions of a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement. After nearly two years, a narrow waiver agreement that did little for vaccine access passed the ministerial despite the pandemic's impact on global trade, which the WTO is mandated to safeguard. METHODS: The authors conducted a content analysis of WTO legal texts, key-actor statements, media reporting, and the WTO's procedural framework to explore legal, institutional, and ideational explanations for the delay. FINDINGS: IP waivers are neither legally complex nor unprecedented within WTO law, yet these waiver negotiations exceeded their mandated 90-day negotiation period by approximately 18 months. Waiver opponents and supporters engaged in escalating strategic framing that justified and eventually secured political attention at head-of-state level, sidelining other pandemic solutions. The frames deployed discouraged consensus on a meaningful waiver, which ultimately favored the status quo that opponents preferred. WTO institutional design encouraged drawn-out negotiation while limiting legitimate players in the debate to trade ministers, empowering narrow interest group politics. CONCLUSIONS: Despite global political attention, the WTO process contributed little to emergency vaccine production, suggesting a pressing need for reforms aimed at more efficient and equitable multilateral processes.

[Planning for health equity in the Americas: an analysis of national health plansPlanejamento para equidade em saúde nas Américas: uma análise dos planos nacionais de saúde]. / Planificación para la equidad en la salud en la Región de las Américas: análisis de los planes nacionales de salud.

There is growing recognition that health and well-being improvements have not been shared across populations in the Americas. This article analyzes 32 national health sector policies, strategies, and plans across 10 different areas of health equity to understand, from one perspective, how equity is being addressed in the region. It finds significant variation in the substance and structure of how the health plans handle the issue. Nearly all countries explicitly include health equity as a clear goal, and most address the social determinants of health. Participatory processes documented in the development of these plans range from none to extensive and robust. Substantive equity-focused policies, such as those to improve physical accessibility of health care and increase affordable access to medicines, are included in many plans, though no country includes all aspects examined. Countries identify marginalized populations in their plans, though only a quarter specifically identify Afro-descendants and more than half do not address Indigenous people, including countries with large Indigenous populations. Four include attention to migrants. Despite health equity goals and data on baseline inequities, fewer than half of countries include time-bound targets on reducing absolute or relative health inequalities. Clear accountability mechanisms such as education, reporting, or rights-enforcement mechanisms in plans are rare. The nearly unanimous commitment across countries of the Americas to equity in health provides an important opportunity. Learning from the most robust equity-focused plans could provide a road map for efforts to translate broad goals into time-bound targets and eventually to increasing equity.

É cada vez mais aceito que os avanços em saúde e bem-estar não são partilhados por todas as populações nas Américas. Neste artigo são analisadas 32 políticas, estratégias e planos nacionais de saúde em 10 áreas distintas de equidade em saúde com o objetivo de entender, de uma única perspectiva, como a equidade está sendo contemplada na região. Existem diferenças consideráveis na forma e conteúdo do enfoque dado a esta questão nos planos de saúde. Quase todos os países estabelecem explicitamente a equidade em saúde como uma meta clara e a maioria aborda os determinantes sociais da saúde. O processo participativo documentado na elaboração dos planos também é variável, desde inexistente a amplo e decidido. Muitos planos contêm políticas concretas com foco central em equidade, por exemplo, políticas para melhorar a acessibilidade física à assistência de saúde e o acesso a medicamentos a preços razoáveis, mas nenhum país inclui todos os aspectos aqui examinados. Os países identificam as populações marginalizadas nos seus planos, porém, apenas um quarto distingue especificamente os afrodescendentes e mais da metade não contempla os povos indígenas, mesmo onde as populações indígenas são em grande número. Quatro países consideram a atenção aos migrantes. Embora existam metas de equidade em saúde e dados relativos a iniquidades de base, menos da metade dos países incorpora em seus planos metas com prazos definidos para reduzir as desigualdades absolutas ou relativas em saúde. Instrumentos claros de responsabilidade como educação, prestação de contas ou respeito aos direitos são raramente vistos. O compromisso praticamente unânime dos países das Américas com a equidade em saúde oferece uma oportunidade importante. Os planos mais bem fundados com enfoque em equidade poderiam servir de exemplo para guiar os esforços de converter metas gerais em metas com prazos definidos e, em última instância, aumentar a equidade.

Planning for health equity in the Americas: an analysis of national health plans.

There is growing recognition that health and well-being improvements have not been shared across populations in the Americas. This article analyzes 32 national health sector policies, strategies, and plans across 10 different areas of health equity to understand, from one perspective, how equity is being addressed in the region. It finds significant variation in the substance and structure of how the health plans handle the issue. Nearly all countries explicitly include health equity as a clear goal, and most address the social determinants of health. Participatory processes documented in the development of these plans range from none to extensive and robust. Substantive equity-focused policies, such as those to improve physical accessibility of health care and increase affordable access to medicines, are included in many plans, though no country includes all aspects examined. Countries identify marginalized populations in their plans, though only a quarter specifically identify Afro-descendants and more than half do not address Indigenous people, including countries with large Indigenous populations. Four include attention to migrants. Despite health equity goals and data on baseline inequities, fewer than half of countries include time-bound targets on reducing absolute or relative health inequalities. Clear accountability mechanisms such as education, reporting, or rights-enforcement mechanisms in plans are rare. The nearly unanimous commitment across countries of the Americas to equity in health provides an important opportunity. Learning from the most robust equity-focused plans could provide a road map for efforts to translate broad goals into time-bound targets and eventually to increasing equity.

Cada vez es mayor el reconocimiento de que las mejoras en cuanto a la salud y el bienestar no han llegado por igual a todos los segmentos de la población en la Región de las Américas. En este artículo se analizan 32 políticas, estrategias y planes nacionales del sector de la salud con respecto a diez áreas distintas relativas a la equidad en la salud. El objetivo es comprender, desde una perspectiva, cómo se está abordando la equidad en la Región. Se ha encontrado una variación significativa, tanto en sustancia como en estructura, sobre la manera en que se maneja el tema en los planes de salud. Casi todos los países incluyen explícitamente la equidad en la salud como una meta clara y la mayoría abordan los determinantes sociales de la salud. En la formulación de estos planes se ha documentado desde ningún proceso participativo hasta procesos participativos exhaustivos y sólidos. En muchos planes se han incluido políticas sustantivas centradas en la equidad, como aquellas para mejorar la accesibilidad física a la atención de salud y el acceso a medicamentos asequibles, pero en ningún país se incorporan todos los aspectos analizados. Si bien los países contemplan a los grupos marginados en sus planes, solo una cuarta parte identifica específicamente a las personas afrodescendientes y más de la mitad de los países no considera a las personas indígenas, incluso en el caso de algunos países con una población indígena grande. Cuatro países contemplan la atención médica a los migrantes. A pesar de que existen metas sobre la equidad en la salud y datos de línea de base sobre las inequidades, menos de la mitad de los países incluyen metas con plazos para reducir las inequidades en la salud absolutas o relativas. No son habituales tampoco en los planes los mecanismos de rendición de cuentas claros, como educación, presentación de informes o cumplimiento de los derechos. Los países de la Región de las Américas muestran un compromiso casi unánime con la equidad en la salud, lo cual brinda una oportunidad importante. Aprender de los planes para la equidad más sólidos podría proporcionar una hoja de ruta para las iniciativas que tratan de traducir algunas metas amplias en metas con plazos específicos que puedan eventualmente mejorar la equidad.

É cada vez mais aceito que os avanços em saúde e bem-estar não são partilhados por todas as populações nas Américas. Neste artigo são analisadas 32 políticas, estratégias e planos nacionais de saúde em 10 áreas distintas de equidade em saúde com o objetivo de entender, de uma única perspectiva, como a equidade está sendo contemplada na região. Existem diferenças consideráveis na forma e conteúdo do enfoque dado a esta questão nos planos de saúde. Quase todos os países estabelecem explicitamente a equidade em saúde como uma meta clara e a maioria aborda os determinantes sociais da saúde. O processo participativo documentado na elaboração dos planos também é variável, desde inexistente a amplo e decidido. Muitos planos contêm políticas concretas com foco central em equidade, por exemplo, políticas para melhorar a acessibilidade física à assistência de saúde e o acesso a medicamentos a preços razoáveis, mas nenhum país inclui todos os aspectos aqui examinados. Os países identificam as populações marginalizadas nos seus planos, porém, apenas um quarto distingue especificamente os afrodescendentes e mais da metade não contempla os povos indígenas, mesmo onde as populações indígenas são em grande número. Quatro países consideram a atenção aos migrantes. Embora existam metas de equidade em saúde e dados relativos a iniquidades de base, menos da metade dos países incorpora em seus planos metas com prazos definidos para reduzir as desigualdades absolutas ou relativas em saúde. Instrumentos claros de responsabilidade como educação, prestação de contas ou respeito aos direitos são raramente vistos. O compromisso praticamente unânime dos países das Américas com a equidade em saúde oferece uma oportunidade importante. Os planos mais bem fundados com enfoque em equidade poderiam servir de exemplo para guiar os esforços de converter metas gerais em metas com prazos definidos e, em última instância, aumentar a equidade.

Tuberculosis, human rights, and law reform: Addressing the lack of progress in the global tuberculosis response.

Mathew Kavanagh and co-authors discuss law reform in the global tuberculosis response.

Global Policy Surveillance: Creating and Using Comparative National Data on Health Law and Policy.

Throughout the world, laws play an important role in shaping population health. Law making is an intervention with measurable effects yet often unfolds without evaluation or monitoring. Policy surveillance-the systematic, scientific collection and analysis of laws of public health significance-can help bridge this gap by capturing important features of law in numeric form in structured longitudinal data sets.Currently deployed primarily in high-income countries, methods for cross-national policy surveillance hold significant promise, particularly given the growing quality and accessibility of global health data. Global policy surveillance can enable comparative research on the implementation and health impact of laws, their spread, and their political determinants. Greater transparency of status and trends in law supports health policy advocacy and promotes public accountability. Collecting, coding, and analyzing laws across countries presents numerous challenges-especially in low-resource settings.With insights from comparative politics and law, we suggest methods to address those challenges. We describe how longitudinal legal data have been used in limited, but important, ways for cross-national analysis and propose incorporating global policy surveillance into core global public health practice.

Democracy, Capacity, and Coercion in Pandemic Response: COVID-19 in Comparative Political Perspective.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged governments around the world. It also has challenged conventional wisdom and empirical understandings in the comparative politics and policy of health. Three major questions present themselves: First, some of the countries considered to be most prepared-having the greatest capacity for outbreak response-have failed to respond effectively to the pandemic. How should our understanding of capacity shift in light of COVID-19, and how can we incorporate political capacity into thinking about pandemic preparedness? Second, several of the mechanisms through which democracy has been shown to be beneficial for health have not traveled well to explain the performance of governments in this pandemic. Is there an authoritarian advantage in disease response? Third, after decades in which coercive public health measures have increasingly been considered counterproductive, COVID-19 has inspired widespread embrace of rigid lockdowns, isolation, and quarantine enforced by police. Will these measures prove effective in the long run and reshape public health thinking? This article explores some of these questions with emerging examples, even amid the pandemic, when it is too soon to draw conclusions.

Facilitators and barriers to community-led monitoring of health programs: Qualitative evidence from the global implementation landscape.

Achieving the global HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria targets will require innovative strategies to deliver high quality and person-centered health services. Community-led monitoring (CLM) is a rapidly proliferating health systems strengthening intervention for improving healthcare services and documenting human rights violations, through social empowerment and political accountability. Driven in part by increasing financial support from donors, a growing number of countries are implementing CLM programs. This study aimed to identify early challenges and lessons learned from CLM implementation, with the aim of informing and improving the implementation of CLM programs and ultimately achieving greater impact on the delivery of services. Twenty-five CLM implementors representing 21 countries participated in an interview. Early generation of buy-in from diverse stakeholders was noted as critical for CLM success. Leveraging existing networks of service users and community organizations to implement CLM also helped to maximize program reach and resources. Uncertainty around CLM's purpose and roles among CLM stakeholders resulted in challenges to community leadership and ownership of programs. Respondents also described challenges with underfunded programs, especially advocacy components, and inflexible donor funding mechanisms. Critical capacity gaps remain around advocacy and electronic data collection and use. With the rapid expansion of CLM, this study serves as an important first step in characterizing challenges and successes in the CLM landscape. Successful implementation of CLM requires prioritizing community ownership and leadership, donor commitment to sustainable and reliable funding, and strengthened support of programs across the data collection and advocacy lifecycle.