Decolonising Global Health
What the Latest Research Tells Us About Shifting Power and Practice
At Progressive Therapeutic Collective, we understand that mental health cannot be separated from the systems it lives within. Colonisation, white supremacy, and structural injustice are not historical artefacts — they shape who is heard, who is helped, and whose health is protected.
In July 2025, a landmark open-access, peer-reviewed study offered the most comprehensive analysis to date on how the field of global health is confronting these issues. The article, Decolonizing Global Health: A Scoping Review, maps over 150 publications from across the world to explore where we are, what’s missing, and what needs to change.
The Study: Scope and Purpose
Published in: BMC Health Services Research (July 2025)
Authors: Deena Mehjabeen, Kyle Patel & Rahul Jindal
Method: A scoping review of 155 publications (2019–2024) examining definitions, aims, curricula, and systemic reform within the decolonising global health movement
Focus: Literature on education, authorship, equity, governance, funding, Indigenous knowledge, and structural power disparities across the Global North and South.
Key Findings
1. Decolonisation is broad — and still underdefined
The term “decolonising global health” is used widely, but often without clarity. Definitions range from shifting power away from high-income countries (HICs), to amplifying Indigenous knowledge, to confronting structural racism, Eurocentrism, and white saviourism in global health practices.
“At its core, decolonising global health is about dismantling power imbalances rooted in colonial history and shifting control of knowledge, funding, and governance to those most affected by injustice.”
2. Global South voices are still marginalised
Despite the movement’s aims, most published work still originates from the Global North. Authors from the Global South remain underrepresented in indexed journals, even when their communities are the focus of the research. The review calls for:
Structural funding reform
Equitable authorship
Leadership opportunities
Recognition of Indigenous epistemologies.
3. Curricula are a key lever for change
Education is one of the most practical and impactful sites for transformation. The review identifies widespread support for decolonising global health education, including:
Integrating Indigenous and community knowledge
Teaching colonial history and power analysis
Co-creating curricula with Global South collaborators
Challenging extractive global health “training missions”
Incorporating frameworks of anti-oppression, climate justice, and language justices
“Reforming education can shift the next generation of practitioners from saviourism to solidarity.”
4. Power must be actively redistributed
Tokenistic inclusion is not decolonisation. The review identifies core structural shifts required to meaningfully transform global health:
Fund LMIC-based researchers directly
End extractive publishing practices
Share decision-making power
Rebalance diplomacy, trade, and global governance systems
Integrate traditional healing systems and climate justice frameworks.
5. Mental health is part of the movement
Though not the focus of most included studies, mental health is consistently cited as an area where colonisation has done deep harm — including:
Suppression of traditional healing practices
Imposition of biomedical models that erase cultural meaning
Over-medicalisation and neglect of community-based solutions
The legacy of psychiatric systems used for control, not care.
A decolonised approach to mental health must recognise embodied, communal, and historical ways of knowing and healing.
What It Means for Us at PTC
This study gives language and validation to the work many of us have been doing quietly for years.
At PTC, we are:
Rewriting how power shows up in therapeutic spaces
Challenging what counts as “expertise”
Listening to those whose knowledge systems have been erased
Committed to ongoing reflection on our own participation in colonial systems
We see this research not as a conclusion, but as a roadmap for continuing to de-centre, deconstruct, and redistribute.
Recommendations from the Authors
The paper ends with a set of clear recommendations:
Rebuild global health funding models to prioritise equity, not efficiency
Reform curricula and educational partnerships using anti-oppressive principles
Recognise and support Indigenous systems, healers, and leadership
Decolonise publishing and academic metrics
Create collaborative knowledge networks that centre LMIC scholars, not just include them
Shift global health diplomacy away from top-down governance and towards shared, just collaboration.
Read the Full Article
You can access the full, open-access article here:
https://bmchealthservres.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12913-025-12890-8
At PTC, we’re walking this path slowly, but deliberately - with humility, accountability, and hope.