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.
Based on case study research with factory and domestic workers in Bangladesh and Uganda, this briefing explains how social and gender norms constrain young women’s voices and agency in response to sexual harassment.
This issue of Feminist Africa reflects on both the impact of COVID-19 on African women and African women’s responses to the pandemic. As a continent, Africa has endured decades of economic, political and social crises. Since the colonial period, the continent has been a primary commodity...
The book “La terra dentro il capitale. Conflicts, ecological crisis and development in the Senegal delta“, (Land and capitalism. Conflict, Ecological Crisis, and Development in the Senegal Delta) written by Maura Benegiamo and published by Orthotes (2021), focuses on the relationships...
At national and aggregate levels, COVID-19 vaccination across G7 countries appears successful. To date, 79.4% of the total population of G7 countries have received a first dose, 72.9% a second, and 45.4% a booster shot (28th April 2022 data).
In France, 80.6% of the total population has had a...
Despite progress in COVID-19 vaccination rates overall in Cleveland, vaccine inequity persists as young people from minoritised communities are often less likely to be vaccinated. Despite being over-represented in COVID-19 case counts and fatalities, Black residents were under-represented in...
Sanitation workers in the Global South are some of the most marginalised people in the world. People from stigmatised castes, such as Dalits and Harijans, make up the majority of the sanitation workforce in India and Nepal. The children of manual scavengers can seldom escape sanitation work,...
Refugees and migrants globally are missing out on Covid-19 vaccines due to supply shortages, exclusionary policies and anti-migrant sentiment, according to new research published by the Institute of Development Studies.
Despite many countries having legal provisions in place mandating equal...
It is by now a truism that the Covid-19 pandemic amplified already-existing inequities of all kinds, whether in its immediate impacts on individual health, or in the secondary impacts of pandemic-related disruptions.
Those who were poor got poorer. Those who were vulnerable to...
Many tax authorities changed the mode of interacting with taxpayers from physical to online as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, to diminish the spread of the virus. Eswatini, the country under study, mandated the use of online tax filing through the e-Tax system for all income tax payers,...
According to a recent global survey “distrust is now society’s default emotion”. Whilst this is a grand claim, it does emphasise the importance of placing trust at the heart of efforts to bring about positive change, as has been evidenced through the diverse projects of the Covid...
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).