Kumanan Rasanathan

Datos Biográficos

ID1742048
NOMBREKumanan Rasanathan
NOMBRESKumanan
APELLIDORasanathan
FIRMARASANATHAN K
AFILIACIONESWorld Health Organization
ORCID0000-0001-9347-1765
VERIFICADOSí
TOTAL DE OBRAS41
TOTAL DE CITAS11
TOTAL COMO AUTOR41
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN2006
AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN2026
ÍNDICE H2

  • From knowledge accumulation to transformative action

    Open AccessJulia Berenson, Rainer Martens et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2026

    Despite three decades of expanding scholarship on social determinants of health (SDH), progress in reducing health inequities has remained limited. While the SDH framework has reshaped global health discourse and informed policy rhetoric, the translation of knowledge into transformative action has been insufficient. The gap between evidence and impact is not explained by political constraints alone but is also contributed to by the orientation, m…

  • What makes embedded implementation research work? A multicountry synthesis of Unicef-supported initiatives in low- and middle-income countries

    Open AccessASM Shahabuddin, Robert Scherpbier et al.ARTICLEJournal of Global Health2026

    Introduction: Embedded implementation research (EIR) integrates research within health programmes to address delivery bottlenecks and improve uptake of evidence. While widely promoted, its influence on policy, programme delivery, and service outcomes in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remains under-documented. We examined how EIR has influenced policy adaptation, programme design, and service delivery outcomes across LMICs where UNICEF h…

  • Advancing health policy and systems research and analysis

    Open AccessAku Kwamie, Lucy Gilson et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2026Referencias: 13

    Health systems are at a crossroads. Globally, health systems are straining under the weight of responding to persistent and emergent challenges. Uncertainties in health financing, service delivery, new technologies and disease burdens are hindering health systems abilities to maximize collective and scaled action to achieve health equity and social justice. In March 2025, a group of health policy and systems experts were convened by an organizati…

  • Role of a primary healthcare approach in Covid-19 pandemic response in the eastern Mediterranean region

    Open AccessFadi El-Jardali, Nour Ataya et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    INTRODUCTION: Primary healthcare (PHC) can play a critical role in disease preparedness and response. The PHC approach was not always considered in the COVID-19 response in the eastern Mediterranean region (EMR). This article assesses the extent to which a PHC approach was deployed in the pandemic response and identifies barriers, enablers and lessons learnt for strengthening PHC for disease preparedness and response in EMR. METHODS: A multicount…

  • Primary health care in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic in 10 South-East Asian countries

    Open AccessAlexandra Edelman, Rainer Martens et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    Introduction Strengthening primary health care (PHC) in the WHO South-East Asia Region is key to addressing evolving health needs, including the high burden of non-communicable diseases and emerging public health threats within rapidly changing demographic, climatic and geopolitical contexts. Between 2021 and 2023, 10 case studies were conducted to examine PHC in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-case regional synthesis aimed to ident…

  • No shortcuts to universal health coverage

    Open AccessKumanan Rasanathan, Rudolf Mak et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    Member states of the United Nations have prioritised the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC) by 2030, setting it as a target in the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 and reaffirming this commitment in subsequent declarations in 2019 and 2023

  • Governance and structure of national public health agencies

    Open AccessLorena Guerrero‐Torres, Zubin Cyrus Shroff et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    BOX National Public Health Agencies (NPHAs) play a critical role in national and global health security, coordinating and leading the response to public health emergencies

  • Balancing short-term and long-term climate-health equity strategies

    Open AccessKirsty Wild, Kumanan Rasanathan et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    In this conceptual paper, we propose an integrated framework to support and accelerate joint action on climate change and health equity. We introduce a ‘healthy climate, healthy people’ framework, designed to support the complex task of synchronising these two significant justice challenges. The framework includes four domains for joint action: (1) Health in all climate mitigation policies; (2) Mitigation with health equity ‘co-benefits’; (3) Pro…

  • An unfinished agenda

    Open AccessAlexandra Edelman, Lluis Vinyals Torres et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    In the WHO Western Pacific Region, primary health care (PHC) is considered ‘the future of health’ and the key to achieving universal health coverage. However, political, economic and social forces underlying curative, hospital-centric models have eroded public, local-level health service capacity—contributing to fragmented systems and persisting health inequities. Drawing insights from seven published country case studies from East Asia examining…

  • Prepared for the polycrisis? The need for complexity science and systems thinking to address global and national evidence gaps

    Open AccessAku Kwamie, Sara Causevic et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2024

    The Sustainable Development Goals are far off track. The convergence of global threats such as climate change, conflict and the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic—among others—call for better data and research evidence that can account for the complex interactions between these threats. In the time of polycrisis, global and national-level data and research evidence must address complexity. Viewed through the lens of ‘systemic risk’, there i…

  • The cost of inaction on health equity and its social determinants

    Open AccessPooja Yerramilli, Mickey Chopra et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2024

    Rising levels of inflation, debt and macrofiscal tightening are putting expenditures on the social sectors including health under immense scrutiny. Already, there are worrying signs of reductions in social sector investments. However, even before the pandemic, evidence showed the significant returns on investments in health equity and its social determinants. Emerging data and trends show that these potential returns have increased during the COV…

  • How can health systems under stress achieve universal health coverage and health equity

    Open AccessKumanan RasanathanARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2024

    Health systems worldwide face an increasing array of interconnected stresses, undermining efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3.8 on universal health coverage by 2030. The confluence of challenges-such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, rising conflicts, and economic pressures-has severely strained health systems, often regressing progress in service delivery and exacerbating inequities. Additionally, demographic shif…

  • Quality and equity

    Open AccessAmy Stevens, Matthew Neilson et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2023

  • Framing health taxes

    Open AccessKaung Suu Lwin, Adam D Koon et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2023

    Health taxes are effective policy instruments to save lives, raise government revenues and improve equity. Health taxes, however, directly conflict with commercial actors’ interests. Both pro-tax health advocates and anti-tax industry representatives seek to frame health tax policy. Yet, little is known about which frames resonate in which settings and how framing can most effectively advance or limit policies. To fill this gap, we conducted qual…

  • The contribution of community health systems to resilience

    Open AccessAngeli Rawat, Asha Pun et al.ARTICLEJournal of Global Health2023

    Methods: Key informant interviews and focus group discussions were utilised. Participants included FCHVs, primary healthcare workers, community leaders and mothers, district health managers, representatives from the Ministry of Health and Population, multilateral health organisations, bilateral development partners, local non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, and international non-governmental organisations. We used thema…

  • Action on the social determinants for advancing health equity in the time of Covid-19

    Open AccessOrielle Solar, Orielle Solar‐Hormazábal et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2023

    Since the 2008 publication of the reports of the Commission on Social Determinants of Health and its nine knowledge networks, substantial research has been undertaken to document and describe health inequities. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for a deeper understanding of, and broader action on, the social determinants of health. Building on this unique and critical opportunity, the World Health Organization is steering a multi-cou…

  • Planetary health benefits from strengthening health workforce education on the social determinants of health

    Open AccessNicole Valentine, Onyema Kester Ajuebor et al.ARTICLEHealth Promotion International2022

    Social inequalities are perpetuating unhealthy living and working conditions and behaviours. These causes are commonly called ‘the social determinants of health’. Social inequalities are also impacting climate change and vice-versa, which, is causing profound negative impacts on planetary health. Achieving greater sustainability for human and planetary health demands that the health sector assumes a greater leadership role in addressing social in…

  • Whole of government and whole of society approaches

    Open AccessFlaminia Ortenzi, Rainer Martens et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2022

  • The contribution of community health systems to resilience

    Open AccessAngeli Rawat, Jonas Karlström et al.ARTICLEJournal of Global Health2022

    Background: Ethiopia's exposure to the El Niño drought (2015-2016) resulted in high malnutrition, internally displaced people, and epidemics of communicable diseases, all of which strained the health system. The drought was especially challenging for mothers and children. We aimed to identify salient factors that can improve health system resilience by exploring the successes and challenges experienced by a community-based health system during th…

  • Adolescent health in the Sustainable Development Goal era

    Open AccessAsha George, Tanya Jacobs et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2021

    Adolescents are an increasing proportion of low and middle-income country populations. Their coming of age is foundational for health behaviour, as well as social and productive citizenship. We mapped intervention areas for adolescent sexual and reproductive health, including HIV, mental health and violence prevention to sectors responsible for them using a framework that highlights settings, roles and alignment. Out of 11 intervention areas, hea…

  • An embedded implementation research initiative to tackle service delivery bottlenecks in the expanded programme on immunisation in Pakistan

    Open AccessASM Shahabuddin, Alyssa Sharkey et al.ARTICLEJournal of Global Health2021

    BACKGROUND: Embedded implementation research (IR) can play a critical role in health systems strengthening by tackling systems and implementation bottlenecks of a program. To achieve this aim, with the financial support of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, in 2016, the Government of Pakistan, UNICEF and the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research (AHPSR) launched an Embedded IR for Immunisation Initiative (the Initiative) to explore health syst…

  • A future for the world's children? A WHO–Unicef–Lancet Commission

    Open AccessHelen Clark, Awa Marie Coll-Seck et al.ARTICLEThe Lancet2020

    Despite dramatic improvements in survival, nutrition, and education over recent decades, today's children face an uncertain future. Climate change, ecological degradation, migrating populations, conflict, pervasive inequalities, and predatory commercial practices threaten the health and future of children in every country. In 2015, the world's countries agreed on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), yet nearly 5 years later, few countries ha…

  • Reimagining global health as the sharing of power

    Open AccessKumanan Rasanathan, Jennifer J K Rasanathan et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2020

    The foundational documents of global health, including the WHO Constitution and the Declaration of Alma-Ata,1 2 affirm and reaffirm the importance of equality, equity and the human rights principles of participation, non-discrimination and accountability—as important ends in themselves, but also as essential to achieve improvements in health outcomes. In recent years though, the system of organisations and structures that comprise ‘global health’…

  • Realizing the potential of embedded implementation research

    Open AccessKumanan Rasanathan, Nhan Tran et al.ARTICLEJournal of Global Health2020

    A t the inception meeting for the project in Pakistan that this supplement draws from, a provincial immunization manager complained about researchers. He was scathing in his assessment that researchers were not helpful to him, that their research was irrelevant to the problems he faced in his work, and moreover, that researchers did not engage with him or share their research. His contention was that their only concern was in publishing papers. T…

  • The State of Health Policy and Systems Research

    Open AccessKara Hanson, Kumanan Rasanathan et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy and Planning2019Referencias: 13

    The latest version of this event, the 5th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research, took place in Liverpool, UK from 8 to 12 October 2018, and drew 2247 participants from >125 countries—the largest gathering to date of health systems researchers from across the globe. Organized by Health Systems Global (HSG), it took place 40 years after the Alma-Ata Conference on Primary Health Care and 70 years after the creation of the United Kingdom’s Nati…