30 years of change in the world, science and medicine

Abstract

Medical geography and global health share a fundamental concern for health equity. Both fields operate within similar multiple intersecting funding, academic, health systems, and development landscapes to produce scholarship. Both reflect complex interactions and partnerships between people, communities and institutions of unequal power. The Canadian Coalition of Global Health Research Principles for Global Health Research evolved from deep concern about the absence of standards for how Canadians engage in this field. They can serve as a broadly relevant framework to guide how to integrate equity considerations into everyday research, knowledge translation, and practice activities. Comprised of six principles (authentic partnering, inclusion, shared benefits, commitment to the future, responsiveness to causes of inequities, and humility), they are an aspirational and reflective frame that can elevate equity as a central procedural goal and outcome. In this commentary, we describe each of the six principles and offer examples of how they are being applied to guide research practices, inform knowledge translation science and build capacity. We invite collective reflection about moving our field toward more meaningful health equity research and action, using the CCGHR Principles for Global Health Research to spark dialogue about how to align our practices with desire for a more equitable world.