In an increasingly connected world where pressing public health challenges circumvent national boundaries and undermine the capacity of states to respond in isolation, the Global Health and Development Sub-Section of the Development Sociology section of the ASA brings together scholars interested in issues related to global health.

Currently, substantial public health challenges loom around the world, including but not limited to the need to improve access to vaccinations; to address ongoing problems of poverty, malnutrition, and issues related to the social determinants of health; to promote maternal and child health; to address health disparities; to control infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria; to address the growing challenges posed by non-communicable diseases; and to strengthen fragile healthcare systems and improve access to healthcare and essential medicines.

The Sub-Section aims to serve as a focal point for study of these and other issues, including the relationship between government and donor spending and different health outcomes; the response to public health challenges by communities, states, international organizations, social movements, and NGOs; the impact of globalization and neoliberalism on health and approaches to healthcare; and the role of culture and politics in issues related to global health.

We recognize that a wide variety of theoretical approaches and methodological tools may be brought to bear on the issues. We aim to bring together scholars who share interests in global health for discussion that will help to build a community around the study of global health, will enhance and enrich our knowledge and scholarship through the sharing of information, and will in turn help to shape and develop this emerging field.

As a means to promote these objectives, the Sub-Section hosts an easy-to-use listserv, on which members may have conversations and share scholarly information related to global health, including news, jobs, syllabi, events, and links to relevant scholarly work. We also host regular meet-ups, both at ASA and virtually. Past additional activities include a mini-conference on Global Health at the 2019 Eastern Sociological Society meeting and an ASA pre-conference on global health in August 2019, jointly organized by the Sociologists’ AIDS Network and the Global Health and Development Interest Group. In addition, the Sociology of Development journal ran a Special Issue on Global Health in January 2019, including a literature review of the field as well as a selection of exciting empirical articles.

To join the Google Group, globalhealthsoc@googlegroups.com, please contact Lillian Walkover (lwalkover@ucsd.edu) or Jonathan Shaffer (Jonathan.Shaffer@uvm.edu) to be added to the listserv. Further, we have assembled a list of members with expertise across an array of issue areas, including contact information and brief bios for media and other relevant inquiries. The list can be viewed here.

For more information or to contact the coordinators, please contact Lillian Walkover (lwalkover@ucsd.edu) or Jonathan Shaffer (Jonathan.Shaffer@uvm.edu).

Image courtesy of khunaspix / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Coordinators

Lillian Walkover is a critical global health scholar, jointly appointed in the Department of Communication and Global Health Program at UC San Diego. Her research and teaching interests include the production and movement of global health knowledges, postcolonial science and technology studies, health professions training and migration, and qualitative research methods.

She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco, and her postdoctoral training at Drexel University. Her postdoctoral research at Drexel University with Susan Bell, PhD, is a study of the experiences and career paths of physicians who enter the US as refugees.

Dr. Walkover’s current projects include an exploration of the translation and adaptation of the community health guide Where There Is No Doctor for use in India, and a study of the adaptation of Community Health Worker programs in the US.

Jon Shaffer (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Vermont. His academic interests have focused on the intersection of global health, human rights, science and technology studies, and social movements. His dissertation comparatively studies the political construction of two “model demonstration projects” as sites of global public health science. The first, in Finland, succeeded in making legible the problem of noncommunicable diseases as understood and experienced by citizens in the Global North. The second, in Sierra Leone, is challenging that understanding, based on the experiences of impoverished people in the Global South. Through this comparison, he demonstrates how conflicting normative principles of just action and right knowledge are enacted, contested, and settled at the local, institutional, and global governance levels in the field of global health practice. In addition to his academic work, Jon has founded and led Right to Health Action, PIH Engage, and GlobeMed. He is passionate about building people-powered campaigns and organizations that fight for the right to health.