Report from Bellagio: Advancing political economy of global health to understand and influence the drivers of universal health coverage

Abstract

Motivated by a common interest in political economy analysis in global health and a belief that this field has been neglected in global health policy debates, we convened at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center for a workshop on the Political Economy of Global Health in May of 2014. Given our shared experiences working as academic researchers and practitioners in global health, we agreed on the importance of promoting research and improving practice in the political economy of global health. During this meeting we articulated how a political economy perspective might strengthen policy analysis in global health and made recommendations on how to promote more analysis of this nature. The purpose of this article is to report some of the conclusions we drew from our rich discussions.