Through multidisciplinary research and policy engagement we bring new understanding and action on critical issues around health and health systems, and how they overlap with other systems such as food, as well as nutrition, sanitation, epidemics and zoonotic diseases. Enhancing understanding of how to ensure healthy lives for all is a vital part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and has been an integral focus of IDS’ work since its inception.
Our research and analysis on innovations in health services and systems – including work on identifying effective strategies to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance – is accelerating progress towards achieving universal health coverage in Asia and Africa. Our work on nutrition spans the spectrum from dietary transition and globalisation of food systems, through to responding to the ways that marginalisation and inequity drive high child malnutrition rates. We bring vital social knowledge to aid effective preparedness and response on pandemics. We show how direct impacts on the spread of diseases such as Ebola can be achieved by bringing learning from research on social issues and contexts to the right people in the right organisations at the right time. Together with our global partners, we are generating and sharing new knowledge and evidence to identify the underlying causes of poor health and social inequalities, and the progressive policies and practices that can help bring about transformative change.
This CDI Practice paper by Peter Taylor describes the evolution of the Think Tank Initiative (TTI) evaluation approach as it engaged progressively with the complexity of the programme. It reflects critically on key lessons learned through process and outcomes. It also offers some takeaways for...
Access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation are intrinsically linked. Without a clean, safe source of water nearby it is nearly impossible for communities to have adequate sanitation facilities, and inadequate sanitation facilities often spill over and pollute drinking water sources....
Today, the 24 August, civil society in Angola and in the diaspora will cast their vote to elect the next president, vice president and members of parliament. The election contest between the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the party in power since the country’s independence from...
The rise of digital financial services has attracted growing attention from governments in Sub-Saharan Africa seeking to raise tax revenue.
In the context of global concerns around how governments can tax the digital economy and fintech, we evaluate recent debates over mobile money taxation in...
This study investigates the ways in which Syriac native speakers from Iraq conceptualise their understandings of various abstract domains, feelings, emotions, actions, customs, traditions and practices through their experiences of the concrete fields of food and drink metaphors.
The current study is an attempt to provide a linguistic, a historical, as well as a sociocultural record of the language variety spoken in Bashiqa (Northern Iraq) by one of the communities which represents a religious minority in Iraq known as Yazidis.
As health systems around the world grapple with providing care within the ‘new normal’ of Covid-19, IDS has stepped up collaboration with a major funder of global health research to make community engagement central to research on health inequities and complex health problems.
The UK-based...
A new book on land and agriculture Zimbabwe – The Future of Zimbabwe’s Agrarian Sector – is just out with Routledge and edited by Grasian Mkodzongi. It’s fiendishly expensive, but a paperback version is promised soon. Meanwhile be in touch with authors for copies of chapters or look...
The increased frequency and severity of droughts across Europe, the Arab region, and the Horn of Africa illustrate that climate and water are inextricably linked. This World Water Week, we must consider how to mainstream water into climate policy in the run-up to COP27. To reflect on this...
The wide diffusion of ideas and focus of funders around the 17 Sustainable Development Goals released by the UN, suggest that the era of predominance of economic growth as the main driver of welfare is over. The notion that we should first grow and then worry about poverty reduction, education,...
Tahira Mohamed has been working with pastoralists in Isiolo County, Northern Kenya, during her doctoral research with the PASTRES programme. In this short video, she explains her findings and why they challenge assumptions about how pastoralists live and work.
In an extraordinary time of challenge and change, we use more than 50 years of expertise to transform development approaches that create more equitable and sustainable futures. The work you do with us will help make progressive change towards universal development; to build and connect solidarities for collective action, locally and globally. The University of Sussex has been ranked 1st in the world for Development Studies for the past five years (QS World University Rankings by Subject).