Navigating authoritarian politics: towards reflexive framing in healthcare research

Drawing on frame theory and literature on fieldwork and authoritarianism we discuss the implications our findings have, not only for Global Health research, but for healthcare sciences more broadly. While researchers who work in authoritarian regimes may be particularly prone to engage in practices of framing, the strategies our interviewees used are not limited to Global Health researchers working in such settings. As anthropologists with experience researching health in multiple countries, including in the United States, we recognize the strategies that our interlocutors used from our own research. By including a discussion of some of the ways political factors have shaped our research we make an argument for the value of political reflexivity in health research: the critical scrutiny of the taken-for-granted presuppositions and norms that guide our research, and of the political environments and power dynamics that shape and are shaped by our research. A turn to political reflexivity in health research can unravel some of the tacit assumptions, biases, norms and practices that are integral to the health care sciences and which students and researchers must critically think about.