TY - JOUR T1 - Decolonising global health: if not now, when? JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2020-003394 VL - 5 IS - 8 SP - e003394 AU - Ali Murad Büyüm AU - Cordelia Kenney AU - Andrea Koris AU - Laura Mkumba AU - Yadurshini Raveendran Y1 - 2020/08/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/5/8/e003394.abstract N2 - Summary boxThe current global health ecosystem is ill equipped to address structural violence as a determinant of health.Histories of slavery, redlining, environmental racism and the predatory nature of capitalism underpin the design of global and public health systems, resulting in structural, racial and ethnic inequities within Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities globally.While the manifestation of inequity in individual countries or regions is bound up in the local-to-global interface of historical, economical, social and political forces, COVID-19 disproportionately affects BIPOC and other marginalised communities.Aside from direct health impacts on marginalised communities, exclusionary colonialist patterns that centre Euro-Western knowledge systems have also shaped the language and response to the pandemic—which, in turn, can have adverse health outcomes.Decolonising global health advances an agenda of repoliticising and rehistoricising health through a paradigm shift, a leadership shift and a knowledge shift.While the global response to COVID-19 has so far reinforced injustices, the coming months present a window of opportunity to transform global health.The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak has grinded the world economy to a halt and upended health systems across the globe, contributing to disruptions in routine health services and skyrocketing rates of death.1 Against this backdrop, the pandemic highlights with renewed clarity the way structural violence operates both within and between countries. Defined as the discriminatory social arrangement that, when encoded into laws, policies and norms, unduly privileges some social groups while harming others, this concept broadens our thinking about drivers of disease.2 While the manifestation of inequity in each country or region is bound up in the local-to-global interface of historical, economical, social and political forces, COVID-19 disproportionately affects the world’s marginalised, from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities in North America to migrant workers in Singapore. … ER -