In a landmark gathering aimed at redefining the future of global health, over 50 experts, practitioners, and advocates convened at the Salzburg Global Seminar in October 2024. The session, titled “Centring on Equity: Transforming the Health Science Knowledge System,” culminated in the release of the Salzburg Statement on Equity-Centred Health Science Knowledge Systems, which was co-authored by IDS Fellow and seminar attendee Erica Nelson.
The statement calls for a fundamental shift in how health knowledge is produced, shared, and applied, emphasising the integration of diverse perspectives and the dismantling of systemic inequities.
It also critiques current health science paradigms for perpetuating inequities by marginalising the knowledge systems that have developed outside the dominant Western biomedical paradigm. It highlights how colonial legacies have led to the dominance of knowledge processes that fail to account for the social, political, commercial and environmental determinants of health. The statement advocates for a holistic understanding of health and well-being, recognising the value of Indigenous, traditional, and community-based knowledge systems.
The statement, launched at the World Health Assembly in Geneva on 24 May 2025, outlines five key principles for transforming health science knowledge systems.
- Holistic understanding of health: Embracing an expansive view of health that includes physical, mental, social, cultural, spiritual, and environmental dimensions.
- Justice and knowledge pluralism: Recognising and incorporating diverse health knowledge systems, especially those grounded in Indigenous traditions and local communities.
- Decolonisation of health research and practice: Actively dismantling colonial power imbalances in health education, research, and governance.
- Equity and human rights as foundational goals: Embedding human rights into health science research and practice, adopting anti-racist, feminist, ecological, and anti-colonial approaches.
- Community-driven leadership and collaboration: Engaging communities as co-creators of knowledge, ensuring participatory approaches in health interventions.
Tangible actions
It calls on policymakers, governments, health institutions, researchers, and civil society to take concrete actions, including:
- Ensuring active participation of Indigenous and local communities in policymaking.
- Integrating diverse perspectives into medical curricula and research frameworks.
- Increasing funding for community-led health initiatives.
- Moving beyond clinical metrics to include measures of social, cultural, spiritual, and ecological well-being.
- Building equitable international collaborations that prioritise knowledge exchange and resource redistribution.
Erica Nelson said “historically, the path towards equitable wellbeing for all has been pursued unevenly, so this renewed commitment to championing the knowledge systems changes required is very welcome. For the statement’s recommendations to be viable, those in positions of knowledge power will have to act differently and make space for new voices.”
A new initiative seeks to achieve equitable health
The Salzburg Global Seminar is one of the founding partners of the NOURISH initiative, which was announced at IDS in March and formally launched at a side event of the World Health Assembly, hosted by the World Federation of Public Health Associations and led by current WFPHA President Emma Rawson Te-Patu.
The NOURISH initiative seeks to take a decolonising public health approach to change, focusing first and foremost on interconnectedness and people’s relationship with ‘place’. It will take a “whole person, whole systems” approach to change, in response to the need for better decisions for the achievement of good for all at all levels – community, local, national and global.
Click here to find out more about the NOURISH initiative.
Train with IDS
Building on IDS’s legacy of using research processes as opportunities for new kinds of accountabilities and shifts in unequal power in the health space, we have developed a new global health research training course. If you are part of the global health sector and want to centre equity, participation, and decolonised approaches in your work or research, ‘Enabling empowered community engagement and involvement in global health research’ specialist training course is for. You can find out more by clicking the button below.