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This seminar will explore the pivotal role of corporate players in universal health coverage ideologies and implementation, and critically examine social innovation-driven approaches to expanding primary care in low-income settings. It will first trace the evolving meanings of universal health/healthcare in global health politics and policy, analysing their close, often hidden, intertwining with corporate interests and exigencies. It will then juxtapose three ‘social innovations’ in health targeting niche 'markets' for lower-cost services in the Majority World, against three present-day examples of publicly financed and delivered primary healthcare (PHC), demonstrating what corporatization does to PHC, within deeply entrenched colonial-capitalist structures and discourses that normalize inferior care, private profit, and dispossession of peoples. The Seminar will end by drawing attention to the ongoing and accelerated expansion of private finance and philanthrocapitalist models in global health and their implications for healthcare access in the Majority World.

In preparation for this seminar, Dr. Kumar has recommended reading and .

Speaker Profiles

Ramya Kumar is a Senior Lecturer and medical doctor attached to the , Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna, in northern Sri Lanka. In 2023, she was Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the United Nations University-International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ramya’s research interests include access to healthcare, politics of global health, gender and health, and applying critical feminist methodologies to health research. Her explores health policy, health reform and gender and health, focusing primarily on Sri Lanka, and global health policy and politics, including a volume titled, (Cambridge, 2023) co-authored with Anne-Emanuelle Birn. Ramya is currently Associate Editor with and was recently Section Editor of the (SpringerNature, 2025). She is currently a member of the (University of Oslo) and the , an independent group of academics committed to preserving free public education in Sri Lanka.

Anne-Emanuelle Birn is Professor of and of (Dalla Lana School of Public Health) at the University of Toronto. Previously she was a professor at the New School in New 91ÑÇÉ«, worked at the Pan American Health Organization, and has been a visiting professor in Montevideo, Paris, Lisbon, and at the World Health Organization. Her research explores the history, politics, and political economy of global health, particularly in Latin America. Current projects examine: the history of child health in Uruguay; transnational perspectives on social activism and policy-making during the COVID-19 pandemic; social justice-oriented South-South health cooperation; and the health harms of Canadian extractivism. She has published widely in Latin American, African, Asian, North American, and European journals and presses and edited nine special journal issues in multiple languages. Her books include: (Rochester, 2006);  (Rutgers, 2013); Oxford University Press’s (2009; 2017/18); (Duke, 2020); and (Cambridge, 2023). She served on the Independent Panel on Global Governance for Health, and is currently a member of (both based at the University of Oslo). Among other scholar-activist roles, she is a core member of the Canada country circle of the People’s Health Movement and has served as the North American regional representative on the Global Steering Council of the .

A former Canada Research Chair in International Health, she has been recognized among the top 100 Women Leaders in Global Health, and was named to the List of Canadian Women in Global Health. She is the 2023 recipient of the Arthur J. Viseltear Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Public Health History from the American Public Health Association and Columbia University.

Register below and join us on Wednesday, November 12, at 1:00 p.m. ET

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Thank you for your interest in this event. Please find the seminar recording and written recap here.