Opinion: How a checklist can help decolonize global health research
When institutions in the United States and other high-income countries embark on collaborations to improve health or the delivery of health care in low-income countries, they do it with the best of intentions. But intentions aren’t good enough. Projects conducted by trainees at schools of medicine, public health, and other health disciplines in high-income countries can often make the problems they set out to address worse. Failing to create equitable partnerships can heighten structural violence and inequities and cause further harm.
That’s a shame for many reasons, first and foremost of which is that many low-income countries can benefit from equitable, carefully thought out assistance that fully integrates the expertise and talents of researchers in the country where the research is being conducted. Such projects could have huge impacts on trainees from high-income countries, providing a formative opportunity to instill values in the conduct of equitable research affecting low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries. Researchers from those countries could gain better access to and training in study design and analysis, rather than their contributions being more relegated to data collection, while also being offered more opportunity to formulate locally derived solutions.
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