The Foreign Gaze: Essays on Global Health

Essays on Global Health.This manifesto, organized into six essays, is a reimagining of global health, outlining several urgently needed changes to the field, including a switch in target audience from the educated elite of the global north to local communities, a change in perception of best evidence, and a higher value on local community knowledge.Abimbola, the inaugural editor-in-chief of BMJ Global Health (2015-2024), begins by recounting memories of his mother, a nurse midwife working in rural Nigeria.A stark contrast with his later medical school experiences and first encounters with the global health field, he asks himself why his mother was not considered a practitioner of global health and why "global health often defined itself by who does it (white people or foreigners) rather than by what is done" (p.17).Abimbola goes on to describe the error of believing that complex global health issues are solvable by simple and technical solutions.