Why & How Global Health Needs to Work With People with Chronic Illness

What is it about?

This paper argues that people living with chronic health conditions (including noncommunicable, mental, or neurological) hold essential, lived expertise that must be respected in global health. Rather than being passive “subjects,” they should be genuinely included as partners in research, policy, and program design. True “meaningful engagement” means sharing power, funding, and decision-making—not token roles. Doing this helps health systems be more effective, fair, and responsive. The authors call for global health to value diverse voices and repair epistemic injustice.

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Why is it important?

This paper is important because it challenges the traditional, top-down way global health has treated people with chronic conditions. Instead of seeing them as passive “patients,” it recognizes them as experts by experience—people who hold vital knowledge about what works in real life. By arguing that lived experience is a form of expertise, the paper exposes how global health often ignores or undervalues this wisdom, creating epistemic injustice (when some voices are dismissed as less credible). It calls for power-sharing, fair funding, and co-production in decision-making—key steps toward building more equitable, effective, and human-centered health systems worldwide