Sophie Witter

Biographic Data

ID1064083
NAMESophie Witter
GIVEN NAMESSophie
FAMILY NAMEWitter
SIGNATUREWITTER S
AFFILIATIONSQueen Margaret University
ORCID0000-0002-7656-6188
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS70
TOTAL CITATIONS145
AUTHOR COUNT70
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1988
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX6

  • Getting unstuck

    Open AccessClaudia Truppa, Dell D Saulnier et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2026

    The concepts of health systems strengthening and health systems resilience are conceptually different but often used interchangeably in health policy and systems research and practice. Operationalising them can be difficult, but both are particularly relevant in contexts of conflict, violence and institutional fragility. In the current landscape of increasing complexity of humanitarian crises and constrained resources, understanding their meaning…

  • The experiences of female community health workers during Covid-19 and the influence of gender norms and values in Nepal

    Open AccessAbriti Arjyal, Sushil Baral et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2026

    Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) are close-to-community providers who voluntarily serve their communities in Nepal. Gaps exist in evidence regarding the challenges posed by shocks such as the pandemic, as well as the gendered experiences of FCHVs in the general context. This study aimed to explore the experiences and challenges faced by FCHVs during COVID-19 and the influence of gender norms and values. We conducted a qualitative study …

  • Health system response to climate-related shocks in a lower-middle-income country setting

    Open AccessMarianne Moussallem, Shehla Zaidi et al.ARTICLEGlobal Public Health2026

    Climate-related shocks increasingly threaten population health in Pakistan, where both rapid-onset floods and slow-onset droughts disrupt essential services and heighten vulnerabilities. Despite an expanding disaster management architecture, the extent to which health systems can anticipate, withstand, and adapt to these shocks remains unclear. This study examined how planning, resourcing, coordination, and service delivery function during floods…

  • Costs and cost-effectiveness of integrated horizontal community health worker programmes in low- and middle-income countries (2015–2024)

    Open AccessJames O’Donovan, Meghan Bruce Kumar et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    BACKGROUND: Community health workers (CHWs) play a vital role in delivering primary health care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), addressing multiple diseases through horizontal programmes. Despite their effectiveness, there is a US$4.4 billion annual funding gap for professional CHW programmes. Some countries have adopted these programmes, while others require stronger economic evidence to justify investments. This study updates a 201…

  • Diaspora as partners

    Open AccessAlaa Dafallah, Sophie WitterARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    Box Global aid volatility threatens health systems and communities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and aid-dependent fragile settings, disrupting critical essential services and programmes

  • Health justice in fragile and shock-prone settings

    Open AccessGiulia Loffreda, Shophika Regmi et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2025

    Health justice is an emerging imperative in global health and health policy and systems research, particularly in fragile and shock-prone settings where inequities are deepened by political instability, conflict and structural violence. This practice paper explores how the ReBUILD for Resilience consortium has sought to operationalise health justice as a guiding principle and embedded practice in four diverse contexts: Myanmar, Nepal, Lebanon and…

  • Understanding the political economy of reforming global health initiatives – insights from global and country levels

    Open AccessSophie Witter, Natasha Palmer et al.ARTICLEGlobalization and Health2025

    INTRODUCTION: Since 2000, the number and role of global health initiatives (GHIs) has been growing, with these platforms playing an increasingly important role in pooling and disbursing funds dedicated to specific global health priorities. While recognising their important contribution, there has also been a growth in concerns about distortions and inefficiencies linked to the GHIs and attempts to improve their alignment with country health syste…

  • Political economy analysis of health financing reforms in times of crisis

    Open AccessSophie Witter, Maria Paola Bertone et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2025

    The lessons from these case studies include that technical teams can and should engage in Political Economy Analysis (PEA) thinking and strategizing, including being aware of and adaptable to the changing PEA landscape and prepared to take advantage of windows of opportunity, including, but not limited to, those emerging from crisis. There is a need for more empirical studies in this area and sharing of lessons to support future reforms to increa…

  • Integrating healthcare financing for refugees into national health systems

    Open AccessMaria Paola Bertone, Natasha Palmer et al.ARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2025

  • Refugee integration in national health systems of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)

    Open AccessAmina Olabi, Natasha Palmer et al.ARTICLESocial Science & Medicine2025References: 58

    This paper reviews evidence on healthcare responses for refugees, documenting the different approaches and their effectiveness and impact in particular in relation to supporting integrating refugees into national health systems. The review adopted a purposeful, iterative approach, utilizing electronic databases, grey literature, and reference lists from relevant studies. A total of 167 studies, primarily from low- and middle-income countries (LMI…

  • Approaches, enablers and barriers to govern the private sector in health in low- and middle-income countries

    Open AccessCarl Goodman, Sophie Witter et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2024

    INTRODUCTION: The private sector plays a substantial role in delivering and financing healthcare in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Supporting governments to govern the private sector effectively, and so improve outcomes across the health system, requires an understanding of the evidence base on private health sector governance. This paper reports on a scoping review, which synthesised evidence on the approaches used to govern private s…

  • A scoping review of the residual barriers to skilled birth attendance in Ghana

    Open AccessJuliet Abredu, Catherine Kroamah Dwumfour et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2024

    The achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3.1 is strongly dependent on the effective utilization of skilled birth services. Despite advancements made in Skilled Birth Attendance (SBA) in Ghana, there are still instances of unassisted childbirths taking place. The aim of this study was to explore the residual barriers of SBA such as community- and health system-related factors affecting SBA in Ghana and to …

  • Assessing the role of non-state actors in health service delivery and health system resilience in Myanmar

    Open AccessKK Than, Maria Paola Bertone et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2024

    The study highlights the role of NSAs during crises, and provides insights on how the resilience capacities built over time by NSAs to provide services in adverse circumstances have informed the response to the latest crisis. While strategies of absorption and adaptation are noted in the study, we did not identify any transformation strategy - which might indicate the difficulty of NSAs to introduce radical changes when subjected to multiple shoc…

  • Fragile, handle with care

    Open AccessKarin Diaconu, Sophie Witter et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2023

    Karin Diaconu - ORCID: 0000-0002-5810-9725 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5810-9725

  • Provision of mental health and psychosocial support services to health workers and community members in conflict-affected Northwest Syria

    Open AccessIbrahim R Bou-Orm, Marianne Moussallem et al.ARTICLEConflict and Health2023

    The study findings add to the evidence base on the challenges in scaling up MHPSS interventions and their long-term sustainability concerns. Priority actions should address the intermittent funding of the MHPSS response, incorporate MHPSS outputs and outcomes in the reimbursement of routine services, improve coordination between health partners and non-health actors in order to expand the scope of MHPSS response, and address the inequitable avail…

  • Evolution and lessons from an integrated service delivery network in North West Syria

    Open AccessSophie Witter, Karin Diaconu et al.ARTICLEConflict and Health2023

    This study adds to a very limited literature on coordinated network approaches used to raise care quality and improve referrals and efficiency in a complex emergency setting. Although areas of ongoing challenge, including for sustainability, are noted, the network demonstrated some resilience strategies and can provide lessons for other similar contexts

  • Realising radical potential

    Open AccessDenny Mabetha, Temitope Ojewola et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2023

    Community power-building in rural PHC was multidimensional, non-linear, and deeply relational. Collective mindsets and capabilities for joint action and learning were built through a pragmatic, cooperative, adaptive process, creating spaces where people could produce and use evidence to make decisions. Impacts were seen in demand for implementation outside the study setting. We offer a practice framework to expand community power in PHC: (1) prio…

  • Community stressors and coping mechanisms in accessing the health system during a double crisis

    Open AccessHnin Kalyar Kyaw, Kyu Kyu Than et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2023

    This is the first study in Myanmar to explore peoples' perceptions on COVID-19, the health system and their healthcare experiences during political crisis. Although there is no easy way to cope with this dual hardship, the people and the health system, even in a fragile and shock-prone setting like Myanmar, stayed resilient by developing alternative pathways for seeking and providing health services

  • Developing a social mobilisation intervention for salt reduction

    Open AccessKiran Cheedella, Peter Conteh et al.ARTICLEBMC Public Health2023

    Social mobilisation interventions can provide low-cost strategies to tackle NCDs in fragile settings such as Sierra Leone through the utilisation of community structures. However, more research is required to ascertain the key enablers for replicability and if such successes can be sustained over a longer follow up period

  • Learning health systems in low-income and middle-income countries

    Open AccessSophie Witter, Kay Sheikh et al.ARTICLEBMJ Global Health2022

    INTRODUCTION: Learning health systems (LHS) is a multifaceted subject. This paper reviewed current concepts as well as real-world experiences of LHS, drawing on published and unpublished knowledge in order to identify and describe important principles and practices that characterise LHS in low/middle-income country (LMIC) settings. METHODS: We adopted an exploratory approach to the literature review, recognising there are limited studies that foc…

  • Individual performance-based incentives for health care workers in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member countries

    Open AccessTracy Kuo Lin, Kalin Werner et al.ARTICLEHealth Policy2022

  • ‘Voice needs teeth to have bite’! Expanding community-led multisectoral action-learning to address alcohol and drug abuse in rural South Africa

    Open AccessLucia D’ambruoso, Denny Mabetha et al.ARTICLEPLOS Global Public Health2022

    There is limited operational understanding of multisectoral action in health inclusive of communities as active change agents. The objectives were to: (a) develop community-led action-learning, advancing multisectoral responses for local public health problems; and (b) derive transferrable learning. Participants representing communities, government departments and non-governmental organisations in a rural district in South Africa co-designed the …

  • Lessons from community participation in primary health care and water resource governance in South Africa

    Open AccessJennifer Hove, Lucia D’ambruoso et al.ARTICLEGlobal Health Action2022

  • Financing care for Severe Stigmatizing Skin Diseases (SSSDs) in Liberia

    Open AccessJohn Solunta Smith, Karin Diaconu et al.ARTICLEInternational Journal for Equity…2022

    Our findings contribute to the limited work on financing of SSSD services in West African settings and provide insight on challenges and opportunities for financing and large costs in accessing care by households, which is also being exacerbated by stigma

  • Social determinants and mental health needs of Palestine refugees and UNRWA responses in Gaza during the Covid-19 pandemic

    Open AccessZenobia Jamal, Zoheir ElKhatib et al.ARTICLEBMC Public Health2022

    The pandemic highlights the need to go beyond disease treatment and prevention to address social determinants to improve refugees' health and reduce their susceptibility to future shocks. UNRWA has rapidly implemented telemedicine and mental telehealth services, making it imperative to assess the efficacy of these novel approaches to provide care at a distance. A long-term option may be to employ a hybrid strategy, which combines online and in-pe…