Generating global health governance through BRICS summitry

While global plurilateral summit institutions (PSIs) of the world's most powerful countries have long generated effective global health governance, the most recent summits of the Group of Eight (G8) and the Group of 20 (G20) have largely abandoned their earlier concern with health, especially outside its specialized food and nutrition link. However, since its start in 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the annual summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and now South Africa (BRICS), a new PSI arising has substantially addressed health and started to lead in some ways. The BRICS summit-level health governance has been reinforced by the advent of a BRICS health ministers' forum, other health-related ministerial institutions (notably for agriculture and trade) and official and multi-stakeholder bodies. This article provides the first direct, disciplined empirical analysis of how and why the BRICS summit system has governed global health, based on the models developed for and applied to G8, G20 and United Nations summit governance.