Regulating Health Systems in
Fragile States
Alice Street
Nuffield Foundation New Career Development Fellow
Department of Anthropology
University of Sussex
How Global Health Governance Shapes
Local Health Infrastructures
• Papua New Guinea a place where state has always been
absent from many rural areas
• How have health reform programs and technical
interventions by international organisations transformed
the health system and people’s access to care?
– E.g. State-building efforts of AusAID
– E.g. Vertical programs by Global Fund
– E.g. Medical and Bureaucratic Technologies
Why it is important
• Need more research on health in unstable/peripheral places
• New health inequalities being generated by global health
interventions
• Need more research on health systems as opposed to
specific disease programs
• Ethnographic approach
Impact
• Working closely with
PNG Government
• Stakeholder
presentations in
PNG/Australia
• Telling accessible
stories: