Addressing Inequalities in Global Health: UNU IIGH Strategic Plan 2024–2028

The 2019-2023 Strategy for UNU-IIGH, developed in 2018, built on UNU-IIGH’s strategic advantage and position vis-à-vis the UN and global health ecosystem. The Strategy set a goal to advance evidencebased policy on key issues related to sustainable development and health and shifted the Institute’s body of work from investigator-driven global health projects to three priority-driven, policy-relevant pillars of work, each reflecting UNU-IIGH’s unique value position. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the Institute adapted and reprioritised its areas of work while continuing to deliver on the main strategic objectives of translating evidence to policy, generating policy-relevant analyses on gender and health, and strengthening capacity for local decision making especially in the Global South. The new strategic plan encompasses four work packages: 1. Gender Equality and Intersectionality: through this work, we will aim to improve the quality of health care through a human-centred approach, by ensuring the health system is responsive to the needs of structurally excluded individuals and communities; and by advancing a positive and enabling environment for the frontline health workforce—e.g. addressing the experience of gender-based violence. 2. Power and Accountability: through this work, we will catalyse equitable shifts in power and address key accountability deficits that prevent the equitable and effective functioning of the global health system and prevent adequate responsiveness to the needs of states and populations in the Global South. 3. Digital Health Governance: through this work, we will address the colonial legacies and power asymmetries that negatively impact robust digital health governance, identify ways to strengthen health data governance with a particular focus on SRHR and promote diversity in technology design and development. 4. Climate Justice and Determinants of Health: through this work we will leverage UNU-IIGH's position within the UN and network of UNU institutes, network experts, practitioners, policy-makers, and academics to advance evidence-based policy on the different dimensions of the climate emergency and its impact on health.