Policy and Global Development

In 2019, our department achieved important results and milestones related to its different lines of work.

Health at the centre of all policies: Making the 2030 Agenda a reality in national and international policies has been at the forefront of our team’s work. The purpose of knowledge translation for the SDGs has been guided by a “health in all policies” approach. Cities provide a clear and unique opportunity to implement this kind of approach (1).

Rethinking global cooperation for the 21st century: In the 2020s, development aid is set to play a different but equally important role in policies aimed at ending poverty. In 2019, ISGlobal yet again worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to identify the challenges faced by Spanish Cooperation, propose reforms that reflect the best international experiences, and adapt our model to a financial and institutional revolution in which health is at the heart of all policies. Our work has been carried out in collaboration with some of the leading actors in the field, such as the Real Instituto Elcano, and has accompanied the formation of two parliaments and governments in the space of a few months.

A fairer and smarter model of innovation and access to medicines: 2019 gave a boost to ISGlobal’s reflection on the challenges of pharmaceutical innovation. With support from the Open Society Foundation, our team opened a reflection process among the Spanish scientific community to analyse the limitations of the model and suggest possible improvements. Despite the fact that scientists are a key element in being a key element in drug research and development, they rarely express their thoughts on the topic.

A global reference in knowledge translation: ISGlobal is, for the second year in a row, among the top ten global health think tanks worldwide, according to the University of Pennsylvania’s ranking.

Finally, we strengthened our presence in Latin America and Morocco and developed a roadmap for advocacy within the European Union.