Dignity-based practice in global health research: a framework of expectations

Abstract

Global health research is generally done by researchers, whether locally or internationally, based in locations other than the study locations and by people with more power than the marginalised groups they research. It therefore has a tendency towards unjust practices that sideline, distort, or erase the knowledge and interpretations of the marginalised groups while favouring those of the researchers. To develop a framework of expectations for practices that respect the dignity of marginalised people, we sampled and synthesised complaints about knowledge practices in global health published in 12 journals from 2017 to 2023. We identified four sets of expectations—transparency, non-extraction, democratisation, and transformation—across eight stages of research: funding decisions, framing of issues and posing of research questions, ethics approval, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, immediate or direct use of data and knowledge produced, dissemination of findings, and long-term or indirect use of data and knowledge produced. These expectations affirm the dignity of marginalised groups as knowers, sense-makers of knowledge, and seekers of transformational change.