Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress 2023 EHA Congress 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

At a glance: The ONWARDS insulin icodec trials

A round-up of the ONWARDS phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the novel weekly insulin icodec in people with diabetes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
Globalization and Health
Published in: Globalization and Health 1/2016

Open Access 01-12-2016 | Commentary

Civil society: the catalyst for ensuring health in the age of sustainable development

Authors: Julia Smith, Kent Buse, Case Gordon

Published in: Globalization and Health | Issue 1/2016

Login to get access

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal Three is rightly ambitious, but achieving it will require doing global health differently. Among other things, progressive civil society organisations will need to be recognised and supported as vital partners in achieving the necessary transformations. We argue, using illustrative examples, that a robust civil society can fulfill eight essential global health functions. These include producing compelling moral arguments for action, building coalitions beyond the health sector, introducing novel policy alternatives, enhancing the legitimacy of global health initiatives and institutions, strengthening systems for health, enhancing accountability systems, mitigating the commercial determinants of health and ensuring rights-based approaches. Given that civil society activism has catalyzed tremendous progress in global health, there is a need to invest in and support it as a global public good to ensure that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development can be realised.
Literature
1.
2.
Buse K, Hawkes S. Health in the sustainable development goals: ready for a paradigm shift? Global Health. 2015;11:133.CrossRef
3.
Ottersen P, Frenk J, Horton R. The Lancet–University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health, in collaboration with the Harvard Global Health Institute. Lancet. 2011;378:61.CrossRef
4.
5.
6.
7.
Nattrass N. The moral economy of AIDS in South Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2004.
8.
Lee K. Civil Society Organisations and the Functions of Global Health Governance: What Role within Intergovernmental Organisations? Glob Health Gov. 2010;3:1–20.
9.
Horton R. Offline: the rights and wrongs of “an AIDS-free generation”. The Lancet. 2012;380(9839):324.CrossRef
10.
11.
Gopinathan U, Watts N, Hougendobler D, Lefebvre A, Cheung A, Hoffman SJ, et al. Conceptual and institutional gaps: understanding how the WHO can become a more effective cross-sectoral collaborator. Global Health. 2015;11:46.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
12.
Chapman S, Wakefield M. Tobacco control advocacy in australia: reflections on 30 years of progress. Health Educ Behav. 2001;28:274–89.CrossRefPubMed
13.
14.
Doyle C, Patel P. Civil society organisations and global health initiatives: problems of legitimacy. Soc Sci Med. 2008;66:1928–38.CrossRefPubMed
15.
Hawkes S, Zaheer H, Tawil O, O’Dwyer M, Buse K. Managing research evidence to inform action: Influencing HIV policy to protect marginalised populations in Pakistan. Glob Public Health. 2012;7:482–94.CrossRefPubMed
16.
Lord JE, Suozzi D, Taylor AL. Lessons from the experience of U.N. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities: addressing the democratic deficit in global health governance. J Law Med Ethics. 2010;38(3):564–79.CrossRefPubMed
17.
Bartsch S. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In: HeinW, Bartsch S, Kohlmorgen L, editors. Global health governance and the fight against HIV/AIDS. Cambridge: Palgrave Macmillan; 2007. p. 5.
18.
19.
Short N. The role of NGOs in the Ottawa process to ban landmines. International Negotiation. 1999;4:481–500.CrossRef
20.
Cohen C. Implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whittier Law Rev. 1999;95:1–20.
21.
Moon S, Sridhar D, Pate MA, Jha AK, Clinton C, Delaunay S, et al. Will Ebola change the game? Ten essential reforms before the next pandemic. The report of the Harvard-LSHTM independent panel on the global response to Ebola. Lancet. 2015;386:2204–21.CrossRefPubMed
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
Taylor A, Alfven T, Hougendobler D, Tanaka S, Buse K. Leveraging non-binding instruments for global health governance: reflections from the Global AIDS Reporting Mechanism for WHO reform. Pub Health. 2014;128(20):151–60.CrossRef
30.
Bump J. Your call could not be completed as dialed: why truth does not speak to power in global health comment on “Knowledge, moral claims and the exercise of power in global health”. Int J Health Policy Manag. 2015;4(6):395–7.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
Lee, K. Civil Society Organisations and the Functions of Global Health Governance: What Role within Intergovernmental Organisations? Glob Health Gov. 2010;3:1–20.
39.
Lencucha R, Labonté R, Rouse MJ. Beyond idealism and realism: Canadian NGO/government relations during the negotiation of the FCTC. J Public Health Policy. 2008;31(1):74–87.CrossRef
40.
41.
Metadata
Title
Civil society: the catalyst for ensuring health in the age of sustainable development
Authors
Julia Smith
Kent Buse
Case Gordon
Publication date
01-12-2016
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
Globalization and Health / Issue 1/2016
Electronic ISSN: 1744-8603
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-016-0178-4

Other articles of this Issue 1/2016

Globalization and Health 1/2016 Go to the issue

Research

Analysis of the corporate political activity of major food industry actors in Fiji

Review

China’s health assistance to Africa: opportunism or altruism?

Research

Protecting health workers from infectious disease transmission: an exploration of a Canadian-South African partnership of partnerships

Research

Assessment of the scope and practice of evaluation among medical donation programs

Research

A pilot program of knowledge translation and implementation for newborn resuscitation using US Peace Corps Volunteers in rural Madagascar

Commentary

Perspectives on the methods of a large systematic mapping of maternal health interventions