Seye Abimbola
Biographic Data
| ID | 5561930 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Seye Abimbola |
| GIVEN NAMES | Seye |
| FAMILY NAME | Abimbola |
| SIGNATURE | ABIMBOLA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Sydney |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1294-3850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 74 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 35 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 73 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
To adjust, reform, or transform? Criteria for distinguishing efforts to change knowledge practices in global health
Over the last decade, there has been an increase in calls and efforts to change knowledge practices in global health, from within the field, in the fields that intersect with it, and from outside the field. While these calls and efforts are often aimed at rethinking or reimagining the field, they often fall short. Based on interviews with researchers who have participated in change efforts within and around global health, we developed criteria fo…
The evidence of things not seen
The richness of urban health realities lost in measurement monocultures
box Standardised measurement approaches obscure urban diversity and marginalise locally relevant insights
A decolonial feminist perspective on gender equality programming in the Global South
The feminisms emerging from postcolonial regions of the Global South have critiqued gender equality initiatives that adapt to, rather than dismantle, racist, capitalist, and patriarchal systems. They call for an exploration of how these initiatives become hosts to oppressive forces that derail gender equality efforts and worsen the health and well-being of women and girls in the Global South. Drawing on decolonial feminist perspectives, this pape…
Fidelity and feasibility of a pilot implementation of adapted WHO digital interventions to scale up mental health in Nigerian primary care
To address challenges in the real-world implementation of digital health for mental healthcare in Nigeria, this study conducted a process evaluation of five World Health Organization-recommended digital tools within a state-wide primary health care program in Lagos. Employing a convergent mixed-methods design across five facilities, we measured implementation fidelity through observation and platform analytics, and assessed stakeholder perception…
Governing health through security in the Philippines
As global framings of health continue to expand their reach, the Philippines, like many other countries, must navigate the overlapping pressures of donors, international institutions, and domestic political agendas in setting priorities. One such framing is the framing of health as a security issue. This study examines how health security framing—how it is interpreted and operationalized—influences priority-setting in the Philippines. Drawing on …
Epistemic preparedness
Preparedness strategies for emergent infectious diseases have focused on microbial surveillance, medical stockpiling and healthcare infrastructure resilience. But what does it mean to be epistemically or cognitively prepared for the next disease outbreak? Taking stock of lessons for data practices and statistical modelling in the wake of COVID-19, we propose a reconceptualising of preparedness in global health, focusing on ecological and sociolog…
The upstream–downstream tension in the global health classroom
In this practice paper, we reflect on our practices, experiences and observations of teaching global and public health, with a focus on navigating the upstream–downstream tension. The concept of upstream determination of health encompasses how the social, structural and systemic drivers shape health and well-being. This paper discusses the challenges of foregrounding this concept in pedagogy through four key themes: (1) a lack of uniformity in in…
Implications of conflict on vaccination in the Sahel region
The Sahel region is a geographical belt in Africa that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, between the Sahara Desert in the north and the Savannah in the south. It is characterised by challenging environmental crises and conflicts. This analysis highlights the potential implications of conflict on vaccination across five Sahel countries, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Sudan, from 2019 to 2023. It also presents recomme…
How health securitisation shapes health system priorities
Health securitisation – i.e., framing health issues as security issues or as threats– is growing in contemporary global health discourse. Given the power disparity between the actors who can frame a health issue or on whose behalf issues are framed and the actors who may experience the consequences of such framing, it is crucial to understand how ‘health security’ framing impacts health system prioritisation. We conducted a realist synthesis on h…
A quality improvement approach to scaling up a complex health system intervention for the prevention and management of cardiovascular disease in rural Indonesia
Scaling up effective public health interventions is crucial for achieving universal health coverage, yet remains challenging. We report the use of the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) quality improvement model to support the iterative scale-up of a community-based cardiovascular disease risk management program in Malang District, East Java, Indonesia. A pragmatic implementation study comprising three PDSA cycles was conducted in 10 ‘test of scale-up’ vil…
Exploring contextual barriers and facilitators to sustaining mental health integration in primary care
Background: Mental health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) face significant sustainability challenges, often leading to 'programme drift' (protocol deviation ) and 'voltage drop' (reduced effectiveness). While implementation science frameworks emphasise fidelity, they often fail to explain how frontline providers in resource-constrained settings maintain services. Here, we investigate how adaptive mechanisms function as l…
Learning analysis of health system resilience
The emergence of ‘resilience’ as a concept for analysing health systems—especially in low- and middle-income countries—has been trailed by debates on whether ‘resilience’ is a process or an outcome. This debate poses a methodological challenge. What ‘health system resilience’ is interpreted to mean shapes the approach taken to its analysis. To address this methodological challenge, we propose ‘learning’ as a concept versatile enough to navigate t…
How policy entrepreneurs solve local health problems in the global South
The presence, absence, or effectiveness of policy entrepreneurs is often invoked as an explanation for the state of health policy making, especially in the global South. However, much remains under-analyzed about their structure and function. This qualitative study aims to understand how policy entrepreneurs influence policy change in the global South. We complemented a review of the literature (26 papers) with key informant interviews of seven p…
Authorship reflexivity statements
Authorship of scientific publications is key currency in academic systems. It demonstrates scientific contribution and scholarship and is an important tangible output that can strongly influence career progression and access to important resources such as grant income. However, the integrity of authorship as an indicator of contribution is threatened by normalised unfair practices.
Epistemic disobedience–Undoing coloniality in global health research
For the sake of one's children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion-and the value placed on the color of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? Experiences of Covid-19 vaccine uptake among people living with non-communicable diseases in Ghana
Following the development of a vaccine for COVID-19, the expectation was instantaneous widespread distribution and uptake to halt further spread, severe illness and deaths from the virus. However, studies show very low uptake, especially in resource-poor settings, and little is documented about the drivers of vaccine uptake in populations classified as high-risk. In this study, we explored access and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines among people livin…
People and sites as community resources for preventing and managing chronic health conditions
The prevention and management of chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs) require community-based efforts–especially as their burden grows, and recognition of the need for engaging diverse stakeholders in care grows. The aim of this conceptual analysis was to categorise existing community resources (people and sites) used to support such efforts, the mechanisms by which they work, and the conditions that constrain their effectiveness. We develope…
The health workforce conundrum for burn care in Uttar Pradesh, India
Delivering specialised care for major burns requires a multidisciplinary health workforce. While health systems 'hardware' issues, such as shortages of the healthcare workforce and training gaps in burn care are widely acknowledged, there is limited evidence around the systems 'software' aspects, such as interest, power dynamics, and relationships that impact the healthcare workforce performance. This study explored challenges faced by the health…
Why does a public health issue (not) get priority? Agenda setting for the national burns programme in India
There is growing scholarly interest in what leads to global or national prioritization of specific health issues. By retrospectively analysing agenda setting for India’s national burn programme, this study aimed to better understand how the agenda-setting process influenced its design, implementation and performance. We conducted document reviews and key informant interviews with stakeholders and used a combination of analytical frameworks on pol…
Unfair knowledge practices in global health
Unfair knowledge practices easily beset our efforts to achieve health equity within and between countries. Enacted by people from a distance and from a position of power (‘the centre’) on behalf of and alongside people with less power (‘the periphery’), these unfair practices have generated a complex literature of complaints across various axes of inequity. We identified a sample of this literature from 12 journals and systematized it using the r…
“We just have to help”
Introduction: Nigeria's skilled health professional health workforce density is insufficient to achieve its national targets for non-communicable diseases (NCD) which include 25% reduction in the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension, particularly at the primary health care (PHC) level. This places a great demand on community health workers (CHWs) who constitute the majority of PHC workers. Traditionally, CHWs are mainly involved in infectious …
Uncertainties about the quality of medical products globally
The role of Primary Health Care, primary care and hospitals in advancing Universal Health Coverage
Knowledge from the global South is in the global South
The impacts of decentralization on health system equity, efficiency and resilience
One constant refrain in evaluations and reviews of decentralization is that the results are mixed. But given that decentralization is a complex intervention or phenomenon, what is more important is to generate evidence to inform implementation strategies. We therefore synthesized evidence from the literature to understand why, how and under what circumstances decentralization influences health system equity, efficiency and resilience. In doing th…
Towards people-centred health systems
Although there is evidence that non-government health system actors can individually or collectively develop practical strategies to address primary health care (PHC) challenges in the community, existing frameworks for analysing health system governance largely focus on the role of governments, and do not sufficiently account for the broad range of contribution to PHC governance. This is important because of the tendency for weak governments in …
Australian higher education scholarships as tools for international development and diplomacy in Africa
International scholarships for higher education are a large component of foreign aid in many high-income countries, including Australia. The aims for Australian scholarships awarded to African students are to achieve development in Africa and advance the influence of Australia. However, well-articulated theories of change that define how scholarships are linked to these and other outcomes are not available in the literature. In order to address t…
Institutional analysis of health system governance
It is important that researchers who study health system governance have a set of collective understandings of the meanings of governance, which can then inform the methods used in research. We present an institutional framing and definition of health system governance; that is, governance refers to making, changing, monitoring and enforcing the rules that govern the demand and supply of health services. This pervasive, relational view of governa…
How policy entrepreneurs solve local health problems in the global South
The presence, absence, or effectiveness of policy entrepreneurs is often invoked as an explanation for the state of health policy making, especially in the global South. However, much remains under-analyzed about their structure and function. This qualitative study aims to understand how policy entrepreneurs influence policy change in the global South. We complemented a review of the literature (26 papers) with key informant interviews of seven p…
The government cannot do it all alone’
Since the mid-1980s, the national health policy in Nigeria has sought to inspire community engagement in primary health care by bringing communities into partnership with service providers through community health committees. Using a realist approach to understand how and under what circumstances the committees function, we explored 581 meeting minutes from 129 committees across four states in Nigeria (Lagos, Benue, Nasarawa and Kaduna). We found…
Health Systems Global, the new international society for health systems research
A few underlying facts drove the decision to create a new society for health systems research (HSR). More research is needed to address the reasons for health system weaknesses and the ways and means of improving performance. Further, an increasing number of researchers are focusing their work on health systems research and while there is now substantial research ongoing in this area, there is no regular forum to share findings, methodologies and…
Health Systems Global, the new international society for health systems research
A few underlying facts drove the decision to create a new society for health systems research (HSR). More research is needed to address the reasons for health system weaknesses and the ways and means of improving performance. Further, an increasing number of researchers are focusing their work on health systems research and while there is now substantial research ongoing in this area, there is no regular forum to share findings, methodologies and…
Towards people-centred health systems
Although there is evidence that non-government health system actors can individually or collectively develop practical strategies to address primary health care (PHC) challenges in the community, existing frameworks for analysing health system governance largely focus on the role of governments, and do not sufficiently account for the broad range of contribution to PHC governance. This is important because of the tendency for weak governments in …
How decentralisation influences the retention of primary health care workers in rural Nigeria
BACKGROUND: In Nigeria, the shortage of health workers is worst at the primary health care (PHC) level, especially in rural communities. And the responsibility for PHC - usually the only form of formal health service available in rural communities - is shared among the three tiers of government (federal, state, and local governments). In addition, the responsibility for community engagement in PHC is delegated to community health committees. OBJE…
Transaction costs of access to health care
Health care costs incurred prior to the appropriate patient-provider transaction (i.e., transaction costs of access to health care) are potential barriers to accessing health care in low- and middle-income countries. This paper explores these transaction costs and their implications for health system governance through a cross-sectional survey of adult patients who received their first diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) at the three designa…
Australian higher education scholarships as tools for international development and diplomacy in Africa
International scholarships for higher education are a large component of foreign aid in many high-income countries, including Australia. The aims for Australian scholarships awarded to African students are to achieve development in Africa and advance the influence of Australia. However, well-articulated theories of change that define how scholarships are linked to these and other outcomes are not available in the literature. In order to address t…
The government cannot do it all alone’
Since the mid-1980s, the national health policy in Nigeria has sought to inspire community engagement in primary health care by bringing communities into partnership with service providers through community health committees. Using a realist approach to understand how and under what circumstances the committees function, we explored 581 meeting minutes from 129 committees across four states in Nigeria (Lagos, Benue, Nasarawa and Kaduna). We found…
Institutional analysis of health system governance
It is important that researchers who study health system governance have a set of collective understandings of the meanings of governance, which can then inform the methods used in research. We present an institutional framing and definition of health system governance; that is, governance refers to making, changing, monitoring and enforcing the rules that govern the demand and supply of health services. This pervasive, relational view of governa…
The UCL–Lancet Commission on Migration and Health
How food insecurity could lead to obesity in LMICs
While food insecurity is a well-known cause of under-nutrition and stunting, in recent decades it has also been linked with obesity. Understanding and thus minimising the risk factors for obesity in low- and middle-income country contexts, which often lack the health system capacity to treat the consequent obesity-related illnesses, is crucial. This study adopted realist review methodology because it enabled us to analyse and organise the evidenc…
Health system reforms in five sub-Saharan African countries that experienced major armed conflicts (wars) during 1990–2015
BACKGROUND: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has had more major armed conflicts (wars) in the past two decades - including 13 wars during 1990-2015 - than any other part of the world, and this has had an adverse effect on health systems in the region. OBJECTIVE: To understand the best health system practices in five SSA countries that experienced wars during 1990-2015, and yet managed to achieve a maternal mortality reduction - equal to or greater than 5…
How to assess and prepare health systems in low- and middle-income countries for integration of services—a systematic review
The foreign gaze
> I was really interested in black readership. For me the parallel is black music, which is as splendid and complicated and wonderful as it is because its audience was within; its primary audience. The fact that it has become universal, worldwide, anyone, everyone can play it, and it has evolved, was because it wasn’t tampered with, and editorialised, within the community. So, I wanted the literature that I wrote to be that way. I could just go s…
The impacts of decentralization on health system equity, efficiency and resilience
One constant refrain in evaluations and reviews of decentralization is that the results are mixed. But given that decentralization is a complex intervention or phenomenon, what is more important is to generate evidence to inform implementation strategies. We therefore synthesized evidence from the literature to understand why, how and under what circumstances decentralization influences health system equity, efficiency and resilience. In doing th…
Will global health survive its decolonisation?
Global health degrees
Allopolyploidization is a biological process that has played a major role in plant speciation and evolution. Genomic changes are common consequences of polyploidization, but their dynamics over time are still poorly understood. Coffea arabica, a recently formed allotetraploid, was chosen to study genetic changes that accompany allopolyploid formation. Both RNA-seq and DNA-seq data were generated from two genetically distant C. arabica accessions.…
Article processing charges are stalling the progress of African researchers
The recognition and progression of an academic or research career is hinged on the number and quality of publications in high-impact journals. Open access publication, especially in high-impact journals, confers a significant citation (ie, recognition and progression) advantage.1 However, there is increasing demand for publication fees or article processing charges (APCs), by high-impact open access journals. Where does this leave African researc…
Health system governance
One well-known challenge of working in multidisciplinary fields (such as global health and health systems) is finding a language that is understandable, recognisable and useable by people from varying backgrounds. Without such language, it is difficult to have discussions that are necessary for multidisciplinary fields to grow and achieve their purpose. Forging a common language requires deliberate effort. Having a widely accepted framework can h…
Confronting power in low places
INTRODUCTION: Interprofessional interaction is intrinsic to health service delivery and forms the basis of task-shifting and task-sharing policies to address human resources for health challenges. But while interprofessional interaction can be collaborative, professional hierarchies and discipline-specific patterns of socialisation can result in unhealthy rivalry and conflicts which disrupt health system functioning. A better understanding of int…
The Covid-19 pandemic
It is very exceptional that a new disease becomes a true pandemic. Since its emergence in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes COVID-19, has spread to nearly all countries of the world in only a few months. However, in different countries, the COVID-19 epidemic takes variable shapes and forms in how it affects communities. Until now, the insights gained on COVID-19 have be…
“Together we move a mountain”
It was otherwise an unremarkable November bus ride from Antwerp to Montreux; cold, but in the rather warm company of early career researchers who were to soon become the first cohort of Emerging Voices for Global Health (EV4GH; http://www.ev4gh.net). On that ride, 52 early career health system researchers from 30 countries began a journey. Little did they know it would continue for over a decade, gathering in its wake, 208 more early career resea…
Improving the quality of care for people who had a stroke in a low‐/middle‐income country
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Efforts to improve the adoption of evidence-based interventions for optimal patient outcomes in low-/middle-income countries (LMICs) are persistently hampered by a plethora of barriers. Yet, little is known about strategies to address such barriers to improve quality stroke care. This study seeks to explore health professionals' views on strategies to improve quality stroke care for people who had a stroke in a LMIC. MET…
Appraising and addressing design and implementation failure in global health
There have been recent concerns about the failure of several global health interventions. Interventions are considered to have failed when they are unable to achieve the intended results. Failure may be linked to how the intervention was designed (design failure) or how it was implemented (implementation failure). Recently, substantial efforts have been employed to improve the outcomes of health interventions. These efforts have led to the develo…
Access to care for childhood cancers in India
Although participants acknowledged that accessing childhood cancer care in India is limited by several barriers, perceptions of these barriers varied. Our findings illustrate that health care provider perceptions are shaped by their experiences, interests and standpoints, which are useful towards informing policy for childhood cancers within UHC
Epistemic injustice in academic global health
This Viewpoint calls attention to the pervasive wrongs related to knowledge production, use, and circulation in global health, many of which are taken for granted. We argue that common practices in academic global health (eg, authorship practices, research partnerships, academic writing, editorial practices, sensemaking practices, and the choice of audience or research framing, questions, and methods) are peppered with epistemic wrongs that lead …
Addressing power asymmetries in global health
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19AU : PleasenotethatCOVID 19hasbeendefinedasCoro ) pandemic, the Black Lives Matter and Women in Global Health movements, and ongoing calls to decolonise global health have all created space for uncomfortable but important conversations that reveal serious asymmetries of power and privilege that permeate all aspects of global health.
Political science (46 works) · Medicine (35 works) · Health care (26 works) · Business (24 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (24 works) · Nursing (21 works) · Economic growth (20 works) · Economics (20 works) · Global Public Health Policies and Epidemiology (20 works) · Sociology (20 works)