Keeping the Focus on Health Equity: Power and Participation in the New Global Health Order

The global health architecture is undergoing significant transformation. Despite a welcome focus on health sovereignty, fundamental questions remain as to how current and future changes will address structural inequities particularly those most affecting marginalized communities.

This event will critically assess current reforms and envision transformative pathways forward, exploring what meaningful equity looks like in practice, from data governance to legal frameworks and community participation in governance. 

We aim here to move beyond current technical discussions to interrogate the deeper questions of accountability, justice, sovereignty, and solidarity that will determine how this changing architecture can truly advance health equity for all.

The dialogue will be moderated by IIGH Director Sofia Gruskin.

The webinar is hosted by the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health.

Please join us on Wednesday, September 16, at 9:00 am PDT/12:00 pm EDT/6:00 pm CEST. 

This program is open to all eligible individuals. IIGH operates all of its programs and activities consistent with the University’s Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.

Speakers:

Jirair Ratevosian is a public health scientist and policy leader whose career spans government, academia, industry, and advocacy, shaping global HIV policy and advancing health equity. He is currently a Research Scholar at the Duke Global Health Institute and a Senior Associate (Non-resident) with the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He advises organizations advancing HIV elimination, artificial intelligence, and health delivery innovation. Previously, he served as Acting Chief of Staff and Senior Health Equity Advisor to the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and helped lead U.S. engagement in the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment. He has held roles at Gilead Sciences, amfAR, and in Congress for Representative Barbara Lee. He writes the Lights, Camera, Equity newsletter on Substack and has published in POZ, TheBody, TIME, The Lancet, and Playboy. He holds a DrPH from Johns Hopkins University, an MPH from Boston University, and undergraduate degrees from UCLA.

Mariângela Batista Galvão Simão was recently appointed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the highest achievable standard of physical and mental health. She is a medical doctor specializing in pediatrics and public health. Simão has worked in public health at municipal, state, federal and international levels. In Brazil, she held senior positions in disease surveillance and research then led the national STI/HIV/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis programme, expanding sustainable access to treatment, combating stigma and discrimination, and strengthening civil society participation in Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS). She later served as Director of the Gender, Rights and Social Inclusion Department at UNAIDS, advancing rights-based approaches for key populations. Most recently, she served as Assistant Director-General for Access to Medicines and Health Products at the World Health Organization (WHO), advancing access to medicines and health products through fair pricing, transparency, and responses to inequities highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Peter Piot is a Professor of Global Health and former Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. He was Special Advisor to the EC President on European and Global Health Security, visiting professor at KU Leuven and NUS, and founding Executive Director of UNAIDS. He co-discovered the Ebola virus, and has led research on HIV, women’s health, and infectious diseases. He has also worked at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp; the University of Washington; the University of Nairobi; Imperial College London; and the Gates Foundation. His distinctions include National Academies memberships, a Belgian Barony, a UK knighthood, the Canada Gairdner Award, Robert Koch Gold Medal, Prince Mahidol Award, Hideyo Noguchi Africa Prize, Virchow Prize, Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, WHO Life Achievement Award, and was 2014 TIME Person of the Year. He has published over 650 articles and 17 books, including No Time to Lose, published in five languages.

Solange L. Baptiste is Executive Director of ITPC Global, where she leads a global community of activists and allies to advance health and social justice through community leadership and action. For almost 20 years, she has worked to ensure communities most affected by health inequities have the knowledge, evidence, resources, and influence to shape the policies and systems affecting their lives. Using HIV as an entry point to the right to health, her work spans equitable access to medicines and health technologies, community-led monitoring and accountability, health financing, and resilient community and health systems. Her leadership is advancing community-generated evidence and community intelligence as credible sources of knowledge for decision-making, particularly as the global health architecture evolves. She is widely published on community leadership in global health, including in The Lancet, and contributes to technical and advisory groups at UNAIDS, the Global Fund, and WHO, and serves on the Steering Committee of the Global Public Investment Network.

Moderator:

Sofia Gruskin directs the USC Institute on Inequalities in Global Health (IIGH). She is USC Distinguished Professor of Population, Public Health Sciences & Law, Professor of Preventive Medicine and Chief of the Disease Prevention, Policy and Global Health Division at the Keck School of Medicine, and Professor of Law and Preventive Medicine at the Gould School of Law. She has published extensively, including several books, training manuals and edited journal volumes, and more than 200 articles and chapters.